The Nail I

Where I am — generic architecture
like a barn or a bach but
neither of those things.
Feral fennel clots the air with ammonia
and the usual marks are everywhere —
burnt stumps and discarded branches,
their currency clattering at the night-window.

I’ve planned a list of the things I will steal:
a Crown Lynn cup and saucer,
an ashtray printed with Foxton: the Foxy Town,
and a remote control like the one I lost.
But I won’t. I will leave this place
cleaner than when I arrived.

If I could get things right on a small scale,
if I could lay the right things
at the feet of the wooden women
who circle the ladder to heaven.
Or reign Foveaux’s rusty breath
to skirt these hingeless doors.
But my vision is divided like a horse’s
and my pockets hurt from the fists
I’ve shoved in them.

Round back the mutton birders are dumping buckets
of bodies in the kitchen sink,
the ovens and deep fryers gearing up a notch.
We prepare ourselves by mumbling a song
taught to us this morning
half naïve native, half colonial huckster
sung to a Beatles tune.
Standing on the grass, I let a nail
pushed from rusted metal
pierce the sole of my shoe.