audio:
published (print) in Southerly Journal 76.1, “Words and Music”, Oct. 25, 2016.
pdf: Cerberus
Archive for the ‘poetry’ Category
Cerberus
Posted in poetry, Uncategorized on December 10, 2015| Leave a Comment »
If Truth Be a Woman
Posted in poetry, Uncategorized on December 5, 2015| Leave a Comment »
She would say, just to me,
that she heard the language of
two hundred years hence, but
knowing none would understand it
held back from putting pen to paper.
Just tell them, she said, that I
heard them all before they came
and how they all faded long after.
She knew enough to know she was
neither liar nor truth-teller. Because
she was a passing acquaintance
I believed every word she said.
Promenade
Posted in poetry on November 15, 2015| Leave a Comment »
In Paris on late Sunday afternoons
the boulevardes were usually deserted.
All the mannequins in the coiffeuses stores
stared out at all the people not passing.
(written 2007; in memoriam, Paris, Nov. 2015)
Laccadive Sea
Posted in poetry on November 4, 2015| Leave a Comment »
(in print in Australian Poetry Journal, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2015; online at http://apj.australianpoetry.org/issues/apj-5-2/poem-Laccadive-Sea-by-Martin-Kovan/)
audio:
Trade Routes
Posted in poetry on October 3, 2015| Leave a Comment »
History
Posted in poetry on June 10, 2015| Leave a Comment »
In Cambodia the kids had never
heard of the Holocaust; in Thailand
they thought Hitler was a god. They
knew Drupal and di Caprio, the shopping-
malls with name-brand goods come all
the way from China. Musselmen on boats
kept drowning, but iced poppies were still
bursting like bubbles of necrosis in the
high skies over the Golden Triangle.
Further south, and west, they had
their own pariahs, but the failed imperial
glories only proved the rise of the prophet
in his flawless canter through time. Space
was only a densely-peopled matter of time
as well, his promise a foregone conclusion.
Sweatshop illegals in the
hinterlands could fill in the blanks, if the
capital wasn’t forthcoming. To become
a state secret was not always a fate to
malign; look how many of them
had made history.
Vesak
Posted in poetry on May 9, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Bodhi trees
arching above these
pilgrims to a shrine
see everything come & go
child’s balloon floats
up to some empyrean
far too high for retrieval
tears
always come.
Buddha not an Icarus
who made wings of his mind
had nowhere to fall
bodhi leaves gathered
at his feet.
Still Life
Posted in poetry on May 2, 2015| 2 Comments »
Woman on the other side who
coughs like a sick cat. Stale
rain & fish-paste, frying
chilli through the broken
window-frame, true dreams
imbibed in needless sleep.
Burmese cleaner who knocks
on the door—temple dancer make-up,
a single beauty spot, spunglass hair
in a net, does the toilets twice a day,
been here a thousand years. He chews
betel always & has a catalogue of smile
that outlasts the marketplace. Some
kind of Buddha, they say.
When the rain starts again, there is
no window to close. From the street, talk
of someone who has
never left.
Final Summons
Posted in poetry on April 27, 2015| Leave a Comment »
When you come for me
pause at the common threshold
but don’t wait
as I don’t. Give me
at least that confidence
and watch me race far
ahead.
*
There will be others crying
in my place
your eyes will be dry
and in that desert
you will always drown.
*
I won’t say goodbye.
I didn’t know you long.
It may be you weren’t
worth the acquaintance
or that we each
came here too soon
when the only thing
we cannot cheat
is time.
In A Tibetan Gompa Hanging Between Worlds
Posted in poetry on April 12, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Poem, written 2001 (Indian Himalaya), published in CHA: An Asian Literary Journal #27, April 11, 2015: http://www.asiancha.com/content/view/2015/489/)
whispered lineage 