Author Archives: Damian Garside

PERIGEE

PERIGEE

I saw him
last day of primary school
for him
riding his bicycle,
exultant
   down that
street
in Parow

next year
high school
a big brainy
boy now

Mars
at its perigree
his head
full of
Ray Bradbury

nothing in the night sky
redder or
more relevant
than our brother
world with
its dust and its
oxides and canals
and
perennial
alien menace
(though
in Mr Bradbury’s
book it
is we
who colonize you
to our shame and
shock and
terror
(the tribes of the plains
know that
story through and
                     through)

cycling full
of joy
     leaving past
behind
for future

wonder
what come the end
of his days

what of this
he foreseen
what
the one
    foreseen
might possibly remember

this is a poem
about Parow

a God-forsaken place
jam-packed with churches

some of which, it must
be said, has
been said,

have needle sharp spires
pointing perpendicular
up at
the stars
       and the planets

Mars
    singled out high above
red
   as ever

something knowing
about that look
             if this
world of
dreams, and fears,
and desires
    and secrets

could ever look
         ever feel at all

TIMELY

TIMELY

an odd time
when robots
speak
with
   more humanity

people fail
the Turing Test
with
  dull regularity

and up there
paid for by the debt
of our
cosmic vanity

the screen
of screens

thing
most legendary

erected to broadcast
our undying faith
and belief
in the latest insanity

OF FOREVER CHANGE

OF FOREVER CHANGE

O monstrous substance
truly

by
rule of thumb
you end in
  -um

are ever-expandimg
our poor periodic table

scare the life out of me
when you
get tetchy, too
much drawn
into yourself
         go fissile

can blow us to bits and
yet, and yet
where
   would we be
without you

clinging to ice and cold rock
nothing down at
deep mine depth
firing
   up the magma

giving us a landscape that’s
just too
        dynamic,
                         fire, earth,
air, water

stuff beyond the spectrum
so I
   can see right through you

see if
   the heart is right
the cells behaving

fusion separation what
was it
Heraclitus said

about these atoms
               agents of
forever
change

      architects of danger, sadness,
all the power in huge rejoicing

O monstrous substance
         so much to fear, such
a great
   debt we owe

might have to pay

JOB

JOB

God took Job
to the heart
of a star

thrust him deep
into that thermonuclear fire

explained the nature of
such mountainous energy
producing
   the rich elements
without which
no life

and Job lost
in awe
struck down
in wonder

though
this was far from  the point
so far
from
the point

to you or I
enmeshed in
the toul and hardship of
out working lives

and yet
    living, breathing
examples we
are here told
of all
that is wondrous
in divine création