Tchaikovsky    by  Craig Powell

Inanimate matter, meaning without soul ---
the winter sunlight on the paving bricks
beside the water. What after all if water
looked at us? a fluid changeless eye
watching how my hair and beard get whiter.
Water needs to hold nothing against death.
I picture a boy nestling against his aunt
as she reads the paper and the radio plays,
"So   mi   re   DOH   mi…" His aunt sotto voce
"That's Tchaikovsky!" He peers at the lingerie ad,
a woman in a petticoat as he'd once seen
his mother, light touching every crest of her.
"That's Tchaikovsky?" He's learned something today.
This winter light blinks on the ruffled water.
I smile at the boy who for a time confused
music and women's bodies. What could he know?
Just that, maybe. All he held against death.
Music and women's bodies. Just that.

© Craig Powell
Previously published in 1997 Newcastle Prize Anthology

Craig Powell's poetry books include:
'A Different Kind of Breathing' (South Head Press, 1966)
'I Lean by Going" (South Head Press, 1968)
'A Country Without Exiles'(South head Press 1972)
'Rehearsal for Dancers' (Turnstone Press, Winnipeg, Canada, 1978)
'A Face in Your Hands' (South Head Press, 1984)
'The Ocean Remembers it is Visible: Poems 1966-1989'
(Quarterly Review of Literature, Princeton, New Jersey, 1989)
'Minga Street' (Hale & Iremonger Pty Ltd., 1993)