Adam Aitken
Two Poems

© 1998 by Adam Aitken and gangan books australia

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To a Hindu Goddess I drove her to a temple by the sea on a World Bank moped, a triple A rice spirit two hours late for a ceremony. She showed me a brochure her face on it, & practised a vengeful look in her handbag mirror. Chanting bamboo pages, annals & spells, she sharpened her scythe, worn down by the last imagined harvest. I loved her then, but she was spoken for, underwritten, payment dates & the humble gifts I gave that day deferred to a distant, fiercer god.

An eine Hindu Göttin Ich fuhr sie zu einem Tempel am Meer auf einem Weltbank-Moped, ein AAA-Reis Elan zwei Stunden zu spät für eine Zeremonie. Sie zeigte mir eine Broschüre ihr Gesicht darauf, & übte einen rachesüchtigen Ausdruck in ihrem Taschenspiegel. Bambusseiten singend, Berichte & Zaubersprüche, schliff sie ihre Sense, stumpf von der jüngsten Phantasieernte. Ich liebte sie damals, aber sie war vergeben, verbürgt, Zahlungsfristen & die bescheidenen Gaben, die ich an jenem Tag darbrachte wurden einbehalten von einem fernen, grimmigerem Gott. Übersetzt von Gerald Ganglbauer

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Catching Breath

Worn out, slow and breathless as a bird
on a ten minute migration, I stop
to catch my breath
at a Foxtel dish on a fruit juice stand.
So this is America - the West Pacific
with height restriction,
gunshots only car exhausts.
The juicegirl turns up the juicer,
then the TV:
"If it sounded close, we ducked"
Venus the Harlem tennis-babe smiled
at the interviewer on Sports Sunday.
'My biggest weapon's not
my serve, but Dad's AK 47!'
I wonder what to do
when Mormons approach,
souls in training, triathletes of the bible.
Their goody goody looks make me tense.
They shouldn't jog in suits.
When to sing, when not to: that's life for a bird in the city.
Senators in thongs
sign footpath licences for friends.
Back at the hardware store
the war against insects hotting up
on a magnetised Creepy Crawly Fumapest chart.
The cockroach thrives on stale air
Public Enemy No. 1
foraging Ben Buckler' s stucco bunkers.
Only a fine blue powder
under a poster for new ideas
peeling off the rising damp will keep them there.
And the bird wonders
at the vast space it flew across
braving microwave static
to get here.
Preening on the people's beach,
the Empire starlight twinkles in its head.

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E-mail adamaitken@primus.com.au