Stephen Edgar
Stephen Edgar Poems
Hardly a feature in the evening sky
As yet—near the horizon the cold glow
Of rose and mauve which, as you look on high,
Deepens to Giotto's dream of indigo.
...
They have their stratagems too, though they can't move.
They know their parts.
Like invalids long reconciled
...
How can she do this now that it's all changed,
Present her lips to kiss
As though that known face were the same as this
From which you've been estranged?
...
Furnished across a table,
The long provisions of midafternoon:
The cups, according as each tongue is able
To stand the heat, more or less full, and strewn
...
Tic in my jaw has slackened.
I'm high on feverfew.
I'd sleep, but in my dreams I'm black and blue.
...
The jungle, from the floor to the canopy,
Clogs and entwines
Its every rung and level with rank growth.
The python dines
...
A breeze fills up the manna gum’s huge lung,
That hologram of bronchioles. It sways there
Tethered and shifting like a hot-air balloon
Preparing for some fresh and doomed attempt
...
Above the yawing water's swing and swell,
The smack and buffet of unfastened weather,
A kestrel hovers, each updraughted feather
Hung from the airy ceiling's aquarelle
...
Seven o'clock, the time set in his mind
Like herbs displayed in aspic, as the chimes
Were striking. Then the squeaking of his shoes'
...
Near right, the dwarf Nicolasito
Prods to arouse with his black shoe's
Diminutive and cheeky veto
The mastiff which would sooner snooze
...
How formal and polite,
How grave they look, burdened with earnest thoughts,
In all these set-up sepia stills,
Almost as if embarrassed and contrite
...
A single sail,
Translucent apricot,
Drifts like a poppy's petal on a frail
Breeze that is not—
...
Surely, here at the heart of things,
Here is the ideal place for the attempt,
Here where the Christmas sales dispose
Their day-late offerings
...
Sprawling like some small group of picnickers,
They're propped among the shadows of the trees,
Though one seems drunk, spread-eagled. Nothing stirs
...
The air is drenched with day, but one by one
The flowers close on cue,
Obedient to the declining sun.
...
Stephen Edgar Biography
Stephen Edgar is a contemporary Australian poet, editor and indexer. Background and Education Edgar was born in Sydney in 1951 where he attended Sydney Technical High School. Between 1971 and 1974 he lived in London and worked as a library assistant in the London Borough of Lambeth. On returning to Australia, he moved to Hobart, Tasmania, where he read English and Classics at the University of Tasmania, receiving a BA in 1978 and a Graduate Diploma in Librarianship in 1985. In 2005 he returned to Sydney. He is married to Australian poet Judith Beveridge Poetry His first published poetry appeared in 1979 in the Tasmanian literary quarterly Island (originally The Tasmanian Review). From 1986 to the present he has been subeditor of Island and was poetry editor between 1989 and 1994. He is the author of seven books of poetry. As well as extensive publication of his verse in print media, Stephen Edgar has published poetry in online poetry magazines such as Snorkel, The Poetry Foundation, The Chimaera, and The Flea. As poet Kevin Hart observed, Edgar “is distinctive for a firm commitment to closed forms and for showing considerable panache in handling them”. Other critical material on Stephen Edgar includes a close reading by Clive James of Edgar's 'Man on the Moon' in the Poetry Foundation's online magazine.)
The Best Poem Of Stephen Edgar
Man On The Moon
Hardly a feature in the evening sky
As yet—near the horizon the cold glow
Of rose and mauve which, as you look on high,
Deepens to Giotto's dream of indigo.
Hardly a star as yet. And then that frail
Sliver of moon like a thin peel of soap
Gouged by a nail, or the paring of a nail:
Slender enough repository of hope.
There was no lack of hope when thirty-five
Full years ago they sent up the Apollo—
Two thirds of all the years I've been alive.
They let us out of school, so we could follow
The broadcast of that memorable scene,
Crouching in Mr Langshaw's tiny flat,
The whole class huddled round the TV screen.
There's not much chance, then, of forgetting that.
And for the first time ever I think now,
As though it were a memory, that you
Were in the world then and alive, and how
Down time's long labyrinthine avenue
Eventually you'd bring yourself to me,
With no excessive haste and none too soon—
As memorable in my history
As that small step for man onto the moon.
How pitiful and inveterate the way
We view the paths by which our lives descended
From the far past down to the present day
And fancy those contingencies intended,
A secret destiny planned in advance
Where what is done is as it must be done
For us alone. When really it's all chance
And the special one might have been anyone.
The paths that I imagined to have come
Together and for good have simply crossed
And carried on. And that delirium
We found is cold and sober now and lost.
The crescent moon, to quote myself, lies back,
A radiotelescope propped to receive
The signals of the circling zodiac.
I send my thoughts up, wishing to believe
That they might strike the moon and be transferred
To where you are and find or join your own.
Don't smile. I know the notion is absurd,
And everything I think, I think alone.
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