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    Ahead of Us
    Ahead of Us
    Ahead of Us
    Ebook117 pages43 minutes

    Ahead of Us

    By Dennis Haskell

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    About this ebook

    but in fact / we are as we are / together, alone, as you can see, / with elusive memories for company, /with your wisps of hair / disappearing as gently as breath. 'After Chemo' Ahead of Us is Dennis Haskell's eighth book of poetry. Dedicated to his wife Rhonda, who lost her battle with cancer after a long illness, Ahead of Us contains poems of love, of two people forging a partnership together and of the inevitable end of that partnership when one person dies. It is a celebration of life and and of the fragile thread that holds us here.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFremantle Press
    Release dateFeb 1, 2016
    ISBN9781925163858
    Ahead of Us

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      Book preview

      Ahead of Us - Dennis Haskell

      Fascination

      CHANCE

      CHANCE: A CONVERSATION

      Chance, I know that my chances

      of having a conversation with you

      are slight, at the very best, I

      know it’s no use taking exception

      to your presence, but what on earth

      are you doing in this life? Your place

      seems so arbitrary; and

      if we could sit down together

      I know the talk would be hopelessly

      haphazard, since love could lead swiftly to gardens to garbage,

      a line of poetry might read

      kohl adrift more she role ti dah.

      There are those sure your heart belongs to Dada

      but you know its heart belongs to you.

      So around the world we’d go on a

      marvellous, maddening, richly frustrating excursion

      in which go is only occasionally distinguishable from woe.

      Some think you are not the ultimate

      in godliness, which you find a glorious test;

      you who know no meaning know meaning best.

      Only when we get to death, in

      which you see you have a role, we part company.

      You say, "In the end that’s the subject

      which is for you, but is not for me".

      NEVER

      The surreal numbers flicker like

      eyelids, 100 kph, 150, 200,

      the nitrogen-filled tyres now

      more skittering than turning, whistling

      to the ground like a fingertip touch

      at parting, 250, then suddenly

      we are clear out of this world,

      its scattered lights that had stood

      above us at intersections, tending fragile

      corners, lonely doors, now patterned

      crazings on a glazed painting. Cézanne

      was correct – there are only two

      dimensions: them and us. And here,

      above life, there is nothing

      we would wish never end

      but the never of ending.

      THE GIFT

      Small clouds flock outside the window

      like phlegm in the sky’s throat

      that we fly into, hoarser and hoarser,

      the engines coughing above cut outs

      of paddy fields, deep olive green

      plantations intersected by water,

      and dry strips of land, where men

      and women work: nature is being

      put in its place. Lower and lower

      until we are being whispered about

      by destiny, or chance. We hang

      dangling at speed, in fragile air;

      but today luck chooses us, the

      headlines will escape our names, we will enter

      the miraculous serenity of procedures,

      of routines, all our fear buckled up

      in a gift of banality, of schedules

      that even we will quickly forget;

      then the rumble and crack of wheels

      on the ground, hooked by gravity and

      weighty again. The most valuable

      elements of our lives are hardly noticed.

      Now the sun’s gleaming off the wings

      and we’re heading homeward in the light

      at last unperturbed by its luminous

      and utterly ordinary silence.

      FRENCH POEMS:

      LA CATHÉDRALE NOTRE DAME

      What would Our Lady, or anyone’s, think

      as uncaring crowds swarm past

      her buttresses, and flashbulb lights

      far outnumber the flights

      of prayers? An amplified male alto

      soars like a linnet through the Gothic aisles,

      unquestionably glorious. Stone everywhere as if

      to keep the earth out. A brilliant father offers

      confession in French, English, Italian, Japanese.

      Jean Verdier, Jean Juvénal des Urse sleep

      secure in their improbable faith, in

      this belief museum, amidst circular

      candelabras of devotion, their

      deepest ‘truth’ barely flickering. Yet

      uncertainty is a kind of grief. The cameras assert

      a dearth of ideas. People exit, troop off

      to the awful Tower. Bones seem stronger

      than belief, yet they also rot in earth.

      REMEMBERING JEAN MOULIN

      Remembering the scarf-necked, firm

      and almost smiling face of Jean Moulin,

      I looked at the statuesque,

      almost imperial Arc de Triomphe,

      turned and walked with a few

      thousand other hurrying, dawdling,

      window-gazing, free and fanciful faces

      along the vision-wide boulevarde,

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