Two Poems by Bill Manhire

Cheerful Tom

In my dream Thomas Stearns Eliot
is walking across the Square towards me,
muttering as usual about Pound.
I doff my invisible hat. He chuckles,
I chuckle back. We both know the hat is there
yet we also know it isn’t! Life used to be
full of charming problems like this —
don’t you think? I’m sure cheerful Tom
agrees.
Either way, he needs
to get back to his desk, put his grim face on
and get back to work on his poem.
As Pound says, in one of his more cagey emails,
that punch-drunk thing won’t change the world
but it might make a few things happen.

Double Honk

My annoying friend no longer has the energy to be a pain in the neck. He is tired. When he gets to his feet to go home, he looks exhausted. We have known each other for years and he has always annoyed me. Yet now I am beginning to feel sorry for him. I wish I did not find him so annoying, I wish I were a more generous person. My poor friend can barely get into his car. Now he gives a chirpy double honk on the horn. This is typical. Not the honk so much as the double honk. I will be glad to see the back of him.

Bill Manhire’s most recent publication, Wow, is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. As well as poetry, he has published volumes of short fiction, and has edited a number of anthologies – most notably The Wide White Page, which brings together a range of imaginative writings about Antarctica. He lives in Wellington, New Zealand.