walleah press
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ANNE KELLAS
Mazerati parrot
- This year my mountain slid to the ground
- and fish flew in the air.
- And I swam for my life through a city of fear.
- No escaping this damned, this Gotterdammerung,
- my life an opera score for crazed musicians.
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- My teahouse in the mountain’s still there,
- but the birds have nowhere to sleep.
- And the white heat this summer
- makes glass, salt and feathers
- objects of despair.
***
- See this cut-glass vase, so perfect for roses,
- belonged to the violin-player at No. 17.
- She went crazy from an early age,
- though she sired three sons.
- Made of wire tendrils. Of sharp green.
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- Her daisy-wheel garden of pastels
- was her delight, and captive birds,
- jackdaws, parrots, sang for her
- while she silently read,
- a garland of dead roses on her chair.
Anne Kellas has lived in
Southern Africa, the UK and Australia, and has published in magazines, journals,
anthologies and online publications since 1968. Her third collection, working title
"Silent Mountain" (with an Australia Council grant) nears completion. Poems
from Mt Moono, ’89, deals with migration from apartheid South Africa. Isolated
States came out shortly after 9/11.
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