Edwin Thumboo (b. 1933)
SELECTED POEMS
Evening
for Chin
i.
Within the storm, a room;
Within the room a special quiet:
Within the softly gradual point
Intersecting selves reflate.
In one corner, a threat of shadows
Mixing with half-remembered remnant
Chants, codicils, footnotes, old infinities.
The air-con’s goblin hum
Shakes the window’s furtive light.
Outside our thunders quarrel.
All is familiar, poised.I do not think of you, my paradox,
Though the mood proclaims
And you inhere.I come free in the eye of the storm,
Flourish beyond the limb’s appeasement,
The blood’s sharp, rooted memories.
I do not move, but move against
Grey dissolving skies, clean lightning,
Jurassic clouds that war and break.
I do not move, but move to
Grasp the horizon’s one simple line.Yet as you return
The broken rainbow forms again;
The sun, resting on its elbow,
Speaks with surety, ruminates, decrees.So the great and little chords shift;
So the metaphors and pauses re-arrange.
So for a moment I am
Released, my paradox.ii.
Do not move: our limbs hold
Against expectancy. Your sighs
With quiet fires again unfold
The patient hunger in my eyes.And when we turn within the cage
Our bodies make, and find a sea
With neither tide nor age,
An act of bonding sets us free.
by Edwin Thumboo
from A Third Map: New and Selected Poems (1993)
