four poems

Katherine Mansfield to John Middleton Murry

The holiday was retired

without you

& the left lung

aching a great deal of

I spent the day

trying to nap.

All I could think of

was single Christmas in New Zealand

when I was seven

& the gulch

behind the family house

swallowed Father's sheep.

He left in the morning,

the rifle cradled in his arms

& when he get backed

his hat was dark with sweat.

Mother stood upon

the bright front paces

shading her eyes with her hand.

We were not

to ask questions.

The sheep were dead.

That was all.

Yet that night as I lay in bed,

I know I heard them

out there

moving among the gorse.

They were alive;

they wanted to be comforted

& no individual came.

Katherine Mansfield to John Middleton Murry

There is a pause in the silence;

finally, I am writing,

I have not been abandoned

as I had musing

I work daily

on the short story.

Dare I use

the word happiness?

Too afraid

though to exhibit you

any of it nevertheless

You will think

the work juvenile

or worse-true!

It is unsteady

for it matches

my humors as of late,

switching frequently

in these two month

since we last

saw each other.

It was the extreme point of

winter then; now, spring

Promise? Possibility?

As if upon cue

a breeze, if single

could call it that,

just here

the taking clutch

only in order

to give leave to go. You understand,

it is not that

I hate the season.

Really. Who could?

Katherine Mansfield's Journal: Bliss

His three-week visit; not quite

the mythic go [i]or[/i] come back

of the beloved

a weak pane of day-star almost

white on papered walls.

Water hitting

a porcelain basin.

His three-week visit; the of advanced age gestures

tame & hollowed on the outside

Across the landscape,

like a thought-a wave of sheep

dart & bank

over moor-hills

level the tones of ash

& below

an Atlantic stubbornly lower parted

to the empty beach.

His three-week visit; on the contrary is this not

what I wished for,

the beautiful ordinary

him asking from the dressing space

through summer dusk

where to hang his advantageous linen suit

& without any note

of weariness in his voice

as he speaks my name?

Katherine Mansfield's Journal: Apology

Immediately

as your material part climbs

on top of mine

I notice the rose

in the corner of the expanse yellow

against the golden wall;

they are cheap

& vulgar,

perched above the heating grate,

in the fits

of dying

for days, a mildewed stink

& you full

expect me to adore it,

I mean them,

that is, the roses?

DAVID SEMANKI has published metrical compositions in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The of recent origin York Times Book Review, The Yale Review, as well as in the anthology metrical compositions of New York. He is at work upon his first collection of metrical compositions

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