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J A C K E T  # 5
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John Kinsella : THREE POEMS
 
 
      Influences
 
That profound machine
      unturns the lathed leftocracy
like personality, a comparison
      sang froid anagrams
of bitterness & disappointment,
      once best friends parrying,
dispensing the jabs, failing
      to recognise they've been hit
& are hitting themselves;
      or quorums that didn't
quite come off, or branch-stacking
      failing to give the campaign
the glow they'd like; & as
      influence is about shape
cosmetics mask the covert
      body: from him I take
& am taken by her, but refuse
      to acknowledge it in
a public place. The journo's
      congratulations fail
to worry your conscience
      & so you are caught. Yes,
I stay here out of allegiance,
      but also gratitude, & pleasure.
 
 
      Inwards: the weather
 
Thorn-dulled in the sheen
wellenbereich, reif
in the hoar blanc
ptica across the border
infinitive paziti
recontrer du mauvais temps
heavygoing de la turbulence
which isn't the sense
nublado in Coimbra,
if it would construct itself
as such: low chuva, in the
or under: chove a câbatros,
I'll take a break on that
like a worker come home
with the educated speaking
English late into the night/ ce sera
partie remise/ per tormenta
brewed, I thank you in Barcelona,
un torrente de injurias
in heavy weather as summer
refuses
 
 
      The Bermuda Triangle
 
Pat Rafter, saviour of Australian tennis,
maintains a comfortable existence on Bermuda;
the flight of balls determined by the weather
which island-culture makes more tropical
than it should - the concentration of emptiness
and expectation like nationalism postponed
and sent offshore - the Queen's English
an experimental turn of phrase on the front
doorstep of liberty, the fraternal vanishings
of flight on flight of the right stuff, as if Play-
Station IS living, as if a package holiday
has you hungering after the wealth
of the pyramids, concentrated to an echoing
point of ambiguity, like the limitations
of radar, and re-runs of The Day The Earth
Stood Still - remaining black and white
as childhood - making an ocean of the river,
the bright ship whispering through the ever
widening hole in the ozone layer.
 

 
 
 

The Australian-born poet John Kinsella lives and teaches in Cambridge, England. You can read other poems by John Kinsella in Jacket # 2 and Jacket # 3.

 
 
 
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