Tony Beyer
Meursault
it’s possible towards the end
he sang in his cell
folk songs or soldiers’ songs
from his late father’s country
suitable for the condemned man
in all of us
his crime forgotten
in an orchestration of words
yet for such an articulate writer
he seems never to have read a line
neither Baudelaire nor Sartre
nor cannibalistically Camus
(not that there was so
much of him then)
not even the Good Book
gets a look in
though of course it does
though of course its absence
is the one
resounding presence
Darklight
1
in the intriguingly Cubist kitchen
of his London flat
Robert Donat as Hannay
sets about frying a haddock fillet
not the obvious choice
for an after-theatre supper
but the English have always been
funny about diet
2
I’m crazy about you Walter
Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity
an odd-looking woman
by almost any standard
too blonde too thin too sharp to meet
the usual femme fatale specifications
and Raymond Chandler
who might have written the line
or at least borrowed it
from James M Cain’s original
was already over
the movies’ jittery squalor
where all you end up with is a hat
a cigarette and a bullet hole
3
in Kurosawa’s Rashōmon
the hoarse voice of the dead man
speaks through the medium
with shaved and relocated eyebrows
as the voice of a child speaks
through the tube of the vacuum cleaner
to tease the family dog
the woman herself a soft rag
with no screen time in her own persona
just one via whom the dark words pass
her face expressionless
her eyes closed to this world
and yet the only other character stronger
is the rain
4
Godard’s two best films
Vivre sa vie and Alphaville
are undertaken on
a planet very like Paris
but with its colours neutralised
so architecture alone
without faces without voices
is in itself enthralling
spiral banisters indelicate
as a mouthful of smoke
but the rooms in the corridor
in Alphaville do speak
burping aloud libre or occupé
while walls or the people
between them
begin to deconstitute
and Anna Karina’s gaze
in both features
outstares the camera
making it and us somehow ashamed
Tony Beyer is currently focusing full time on poetry in Taranaki, NZ.
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Meursault
it’s possible towards the end
he sang in his cell
folk songs or soldiers’ songs
from his late father’s country
suitable for the condemned man
in all of us
his crime forgotten
in an orchestration of words
yet for such an articulate writer
he seems never to have read a line
neither Baudelaire nor Sartre
nor cannibalistically Camus
(not that there was so
much of him then)
not even the Good Book
gets a look in
though of course it does
though of course its absence
is the one
resounding presence
Darklight
1
in the intriguingly Cubist kitchen
of his London flat
Robert Donat as Hannay
sets about frying a haddock fillet
not the obvious choice
for an after-theatre supper
but the English have always been
funny about diet
2
I’m crazy about you Walter
Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity
an odd-looking woman
by almost any standard
too blonde too thin too sharp to meet
the usual femme fatale specifications
and Raymond Chandler
who might have written the line
or at least borrowed it
from James M Cain’s original
was already over
the movies’ jittery squalor
where all you end up with is a hat
a cigarette and a bullet hole
3
in Kurosawa’s Rashōmon
the hoarse voice of the dead man
speaks through the medium
with shaved and relocated eyebrows
as the voice of a child speaks
through the tube of the vacuum cleaner
to tease the family dog
the woman herself a soft rag
with no screen time in her own persona
just one via whom the dark words pass
her face expressionless
her eyes closed to this world
and yet the only other character stronger
is the rain
4
Godard’s two best films
Vivre sa vie and Alphaville
are undertaken on
a planet very like Paris
but with its colours neutralised
so architecture alone
without faces without voices
is in itself enthralling
spiral banisters indelicate
as a mouthful of smoke
but the rooms in the corridor
in Alphaville do speak
burping aloud libre or occupé
while walls or the people
between them
begin to deconstitute
and Anna Karina’s gaze
in both features
outstares the camera
making it and us somehow ashamed
Tony Beyer is currently focusing full time on poetry in Taranaki, NZ.
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