Peter Skrzynecki Biography

1949


1
Tired, embittered,
wary of each other—
like men whose death sentences
have been commuted,
...

My gentle father
Kept pace only with the Joneses
Of his own mind's making -
Loved his garden like an only child,
...

It was the mountain
I was always going to climb —
Swore that heat would not tire me,
Flowers and snakes could not
...

Week after week
we've met as friends or strangers
and talked about
writing poetry -
tried to finish off
a line or more
in the small tutorial room
or on the steps of the quadrangle:

meeting and sharing the same air,
same sunlight, wind
or whatever the weather might be -

mindful of the hour's brevity
and where our lives
have to be when it's over:

in a car, a train,
walking away -
travelling through private dreams:

remembering, perhaps, the fringed pond
in the field below
the quadrangle steps,
bulrushes and swallows among trees -

or the little track winding skywards
through the grass
to the highway and beyond the hills,

connecting where we're at
and where we're hoping to be -

sometimes with such difficulty,
at other times with such puzzling ease.
...

Even words are tinged with autumn
before they drift
over the brown stream's crest -
falling at Gostwyck from a haze
...