SurVision Magazine

Ariel in Hampstead Heath


Pondside, in the island within the garden
duffel coated and nothing else
Ariel takes off my chainmail
briskly on the sand in wintry sun.
Rejects from the Immortality Brigade
we go to a ruined lighthouse on the hill.
Machine or man we outgrow pronouns,
cede the state, go monastic,
trade with beasts and match-make.

So rich we'll be in dominions of envy,
slimmed down on lettuce, gone wireless
we embrace mere air.
Magic attracts our mirrored other-selves
nude but enhanced
by rare theatric machines!

I leave on the next ship out.

Years later postcards arrive in multi-coloured inks,
whole portfolios signed
by island friends writing by starlight.
Their afternoons meander
in pure radio-astronomy's
song and its aftermath.
I miss long conversations
with the wizard
who rescued us from a witch,
who will never know
who we inhabit in-between,
what is noise, what is message,
old man who can't let go.




Girl of Budapest


At the age la fille en fleur
she can dance
and she is bored of antiquities
like those village peasant girls
in guilded frames her grandma
loved too much.

On Sundays she has
that south-of-the-river
rich-girl-look,
a frilled white dress, sailor's top, red pumps,
a blue ribbon pony-tail.

She carries herself with weightless arms,
on the verge of "spoilage" was the phrase.

Her father over-attentive.

She is thinking of horses and
horselike moves,

skipping through the Marais.

She is thinking
of escaping her father!

She may not weight herself
with thought at all.

Later I read
Michaux's "Girl of Budapest":

Her arms weigh nothing. One encounters them like water.

She knows a Peter Pan collar
diverts politicians.

On school days I've seen another version:
she smokes herself to death,
thinks of boys and drugs,
tough as a banlieue gangster.

Last night she was
a ballerina doing points,
framed in the clichés
of the 4th arrondissement
in a window overflowing
with geraniums –
random flecks of paint
that detach from their stems
to paraglide down
in homage
onto the blackened street.




Adam Aitken was born in London, and spent his early childhood in London, Thailand and Malaysia before moving permanently to Australia in 1968. As well as numerous articles on poetry, essays on Asian-Australian literature, and works of creative non-fiction, he is the author of five full-length collections of poetry, the most recent being Tonto's Revenge (2011). An award-winning poet, he lectures at the University of Technology, Sydney.