Hotel Emergencies
The fire alarm sound: is given as a howling sound. Do
not use the lifts. The optimism sound: is given as the
sound of a man brushing his teeth. Do not go to bed.
The respectability sound: is given as a familiar honking
sound. Do not run, do not sing. The dearly-departed
sound: is given as a rumble in the bones. Do not enter
the coffin. The afterlife sound: is given as the music of
the spheres. It will not reconstruct. The bordello sound:
is given as a small child screaming. Do not turn on the
light. The accident sound: is given as an ambulance
sound. You can hear it coming closer, do not crowd the
footpaths. The execution sound: is given as the sound of
prayer. Oh be cautious, do not stand too near
or you will surely hear: the machinegun sound, the weeping
mother sound, the agony sound, the dying child sound:
whose voice is already drowned by the approaching
helicopter sound: which is given as the dead flower
sound, the warlord sound, the hunting and fleeing and
clattering sound, the amputation sound, the bloodbath
sound, the sound of the President quietly addressing
his dinner; now he places his knife and fork together (a
polite and tidy sound) before addressing the nation
and making a just and necessary war sound: which is given
as a freedom sound (do not cherish memory): which is
given as a security sound: which is given as a prisoner
sound: which is given again as a war sound: which is
a torture sound and a watchtower sound and a firing
sound: which is given as a Timor sound: which is given
as a decapitation sound (do not think you will not gasp
tomorrow): which is given as a Darfur sound: which is
given as a Dachau sound: which is given as a dry river-
bed sound, as a wind in the poplars sound: which is
given again as an angry god sound:
which is here as a Muslim sound: which is here as a Christian
sound: which is here as a Jewish sound: which is here as
a merciful god sound: which is here as a praying sound;
which is here as a kneeling sound: which is here as a
scripture sound: which is here as a black-wing sound: as
a dark-cloud sound: as a black-ash sound: which is given
as a howling sound: which is given as a fire alarm sound:
which is given late at night, calling you from your bed (do
not use the lifts): which is given as a burning sound, no,
as a human sound, as a heartbeat sound: which is given
as a sound beyond sound: which is given as the sound
of many weeping: which is given as an entirely familiar
sound, a sound like no other, up there high in the smoke
above the stars
Bill Manhire
~
Bill Manhire's Selected Poems appeared earlier this year from Carcanet (UK) and from Victoria University Press (NZ), a few months earlier. Included in that collection, 'Hotel Emergencies' was written in 2004, at the height of the Iraq conflict. The poem is just as poignant ten years later. Most of the time, Bill Manhire (born 1946) is a poet of the lilting, if often disconcerting, personal lyric. Among his influences are an unconventional upbringing in public hotels around the remote New Zealand province of Southland, his early studies of Icelandic literature, and a wide-ranging attentiveness which has brought him into fruitful collaborations with visual artists including Ralph Hotere (1931-2013) and with numerous composers–most recently, Norman Meehan (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1D9zKYfBxo). With its sense of public urgency and its almost panicked delivery, 'Hotel Emergenices' is uncharacteristically direct in its engagement with the socio-political world, yet the form of intimate address and the graceful accumulation of details is typical of Manhire's poetry.