Title: Sport 17

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, November 1996, Wellington

Part of: Sport

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Sport 17: Spring 1996

Annora Gollop

Annora Gollop

page 48

Love and Sadness

Peeling onions
I am overcome
by a feeling
I recognise as grief
This is grief
Why am I grieving?

Now only music
hold me
melody and love
both like a tension
in the muscles
round my heart

I said I was lonely
He said I was brave
to say it
I said that saying it
made it smaller
and stopped it
crushing me
(I said I was lonely)

She said ‘He doesn't
have that side of him
touched much’ so I sent
the letter. You saw me
and touched me. I just
saw you. I have to
practise touching.

page 49

Love is a Kind of Seeing

It was that evening
that showed you to me
and you left on a plane
in the morning.

You became wise to me
over months and then
suddenly (your wisdom—
neglected in unbelief).

I realised you
had recognised me
I was in shadow
but you saw me.

You bridged the gap
of circumstance
with your body
you reached my shadow
and you held me.

page 50

Same Name? No Relation

1. Accepting what I can't do
is making me quiet
because it's all a little painful
like one from the nether centuries
an intellectual man of leisure
saying, modestly,
‘it's one of my few pleasures.’.

2. The dogs
locked up
in a very small
wired box
in a very large
fenced yard
aren't considering
whether they would
if they could.

3. People who remind me of people
who remind me of sadness
nasty, small, little sadness
like ‘What means this’ thing joy.

4. What are the things I cannot
laugh about properly?
They are my history.

page 51

Sometimes I am Filled with a Sadness Beyond Reason

1. It is hard to write love songs
when you're angry

It's hard to think anything
when the walls are thin as paper

It's hard to make Christmas
when you're crying
and feuding

And crying silently
because the walls are thin
thin as paper

It's easy to cut yourself
when you are working
and working against
against your own hatred

It's all gone
it's always all gone
but pain fills you.

2. Walls as thin as paper
wind like a house turning
‘sorry we'd rather’ like dislocation
pain like memory
love like a bus at the terminus.

page 52

Thomas

Where is Thomas
the cat I saved from dying
and kept by me
until I could not tell
when it was I came to love him
who disappeared when I was gone
and not all my returning,
nor the shock, nor all my tears,
could bring him back to me.

page 53

To Mrs Bold from Little Gollop

I held that silver lizard until I mislaid it
and was covered in grief.

I held that silver lizard until the filigree of its memory
no longer matched the flattening detail of the silver.

I held that silver lizard until the silver lizard tail
bent and broke off and could not be kept
because the lizard became complete without it.

I held it until it lost its tail
I held it until its memory wore thin
I held it until it held within it death

And still I held it,
the gift of my childhood in silver.