My favourite three lines, Max:
cramped egos elbow to elbow,
dire shortage of insight,
surplus of panorama
Good title too. Ah, prospects.
Bill
On 19/02/2015, at 6:02 AM, Max Richards wrote:
> The Prospect from Titirangi
> (Auckland 1962-3)
>
> The road from town wound upward -
> a few cars, a rare bus. Short of the top,
> you pulled the cord, got off - or parked
> where you could and locked,
>
> clambered with your parcels
> up steep winding steps
> rainwater eroded, made slips
> of soil dark, slithery.
>
> The house on the hill looked
> out far - cramped indoors
> you had to look past mean walls,
> stretch past pinched floors.
>
> In that steep garden
> half-way up its private hill
> the more the views were large,
> the more the house felt small.
>
> Further up, but for the trees,
> the westward vista was to where
> cold Tasman lurked; clearer
> north-east over suburbs to city,
>
> its warmer east coast harbour,
> and also if you knew where
> inquisitively to crane your neck,
> the nearer harbour, Manukau,
>
> untrafficked outlet to the Tasman,
> shallow, tame, neglected;
> tree-ferns down to the water,
> hidden cottages, protected.
>
> All that was years - an age - ago,
> a new raw marriage ago,
> cramped egos elbow to elbow,
> dire shortage of insight,
>
> surplus of panorama,
> gold sunrise, iridescent sunset;
> benign weather passed over,
> never a flood nor a drought;
>
> a prospect, promises, a rough
> journey from Whenuapai - there -
> where the last old airliner
> overseas left a lifetime ago.
>
|