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Imperishable
The tree is laden down with little pears
like little balls of dull brass :
an outlandishly inedible spectacle
with no foreshadowing of fruit's decay :
this hard thing is the ripeness, so that I suppose
a tree like this would stand here
after all those round it had let go their leaves,
no season able to disturb it.
I was working one year in a wealthy person's mansion.
He had an enormous hoard of china birds
on all his shelves and mantle pieces,
lovely details, as if on the point of bursting
into plumes, or singing something; and more notably,
a big tree in the stairwell,
every twig and branch a gilded
cable; every sprouting bud of slivers of jade;
and covered in blossom of some other semi-precious
stone of a tender rose translucency. Of course
it made you think of Yeats.
Now here I am in another stately garden.
No-one lives here, but I dare say only rich men
can afford to own imperishable trees.
Nicholas Messenger had his first poems published in New Zealand as a schoolboy. He won the Glover
Poetry award in the 1970’s. In recent years he has had work published in a good number of online magazines.
He has written plays for children, fairy tales, short stories and five novels which await a publisher.
He was born in 1945, completed a degree at Auckland University, travelled extensively, and lived at
various times in France, England and Japan. He has worked at many jobs, including seaman, security guard,
demolition worker and laboratory technician, and for a long time made his living as a teacher, of science,
art, and languages, in High Schools in New Zealand, and of English in Japan. Lately he has been running
a home-stay business in Hokitika, but is currently living in Nelson. He has been married twice and has two grown-up children.
Email: Nicholas Messenger
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