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Allen Curnow
THE VESPIARY:
A
FABLE
Its thoughts are modular, they attach themselves
to the young tree, the soffit of the back porch,
a grey box with multiple apertures where
its visible business is with legs and wings
purposefully hesitant, the unseen venom
is contingent, the sting for later inquiry.
I write. Those writings which we now identify
doubtfully as such yield nothing. I transcribe
tapes of the period recovered from pack ice,
leaning hard on the crude systems in use today.
I construe gaps, blips, ambiguous phonemes
and learn that the day after the first confirmed
sightings country children were sent home early
from school, a pet goat found stung dead on its tether.
Townspeople who'd never heard of honey dew
ran out into the streets, crying and silent.
Unopposed meanwhile, our oceanic nation's
defences in traditional disrepair,
the feral Vespoidea victory in their grasp
thrust inland, seized ornamental trees, PVC
downpipes breeches of abandoned guns ditched
cars, open mouths, armpits, natural nests
of which the naturalness has taken centuries
issuing the safe side of history's mirror.
I write . The past itself encoded itself
known only to itself and is dead , and we
live in our different style . No one knows how
