Bruce Beaver

At the foot of a northern pylon of the Harbour Bridge
I have kept my vigil since the mighty span was built.
I come early in the day from worn-out corners of the area
and sit when the sun is out until the waning afternoon,
...

I was friendly with a woman once.
It was an unusual experience.
There were certain innate boundaries
and the inevitably marked frontiers.
...

God knows what was done to you.
I may never find out fully.
The truth reaches us slowly here,
is delayed in the mail continually
...

As you say in another way somewhere
men just dropp women gradually
wear-out. The men all nose-dive
out of life after getting all entangled
...

Halfway through one of your longer poems
I paused for the breath of these words, unclamorous
to come onto the page. As it happens
this minor poem is happening now.
...

The only space I’ve inhabited
has been my self.
Ask me where one street intersects
with another hereabouts
...

Youth, you say. What of it?
I could say I was as fair
and handsome as a hero.
But I was always plain. I hated
...

When I take up my position
at the base of the westering wall
of Thebes, it is midday.
This time I’m blind; that time I see
...

He’ll come back to you in the darkest night
shambling, robust still, not a little noisome.
He’ll perch his large object-overlapping frame
on the edge of your bed and unravel a repertoire
...

Wonderful woman, proud to be a person
in this day and age of swapped sexes.
To feel love for one’s own kind
(sex is just an arbitrary accident) —
...

Reading your poems makes me want to
make again. Something stirs in me
that is no longer man-root,
no longer the male imperative
...

I’m on intimate terms with so many parts of the night
daylight seems duller and far more prosaically formed.
At first feebly I learned night’s calisthenics
then how to apply them in the arena of day;
...

Pain, the problem of, not answered
by dogma, orthodox or other-
wise. The only problem being
how to bear with. You may have an
...

Three anti-depressants and one diuretic a day
seven and five times a week respectively
save me from the pit.
I pray while I’m taking them and in between doses
...

Ten adults at a laden table,
two children sitting on the floor,
one dog to bark when it was able,
who could ask for anything more.
...

Another king I knew had twelve champions,
each chosen for his astrological sign.
My favourite was the Piscean who combined
courage and gentleness but who eventually
...

Outside the cathedral at five
the cats congregated and I was fulfilled
feeding them. I would shuffle
in my modest skirt and tatty shawl
...

Death beckoned me towards the beach
the same one on which I’d spent days,
weeks, years made up of the hours
of my life as a child —
...

<i>for Dorothy Porter </i>
Square white roofs with square white towers.
Above them, balconies of white
abutting, tables richly bearing
...

<i>Like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down
Simon & Garfunkel</i>
what does the world know of you and me
together what does it know of us together
why should it care
...