Dunedin poet David Howard mourns the loss of fellow poet

David Howard's elegy for Rhys Brookbanks, a poet who is still listed as missing after the collapse of the Canterbury Television Building.

David writes:
As I observed to Cilla McQueen, who has encouraged me to make the poem available publicly, 'At 25 he had hardly started to write and now words are beyond him, even if he is not beyond words.'

ALL ABOUT IT

             in memory of Rhys Brookbanks

1
Things go on
leaving. They go on because

they leave. A leaf falls over
itself, the very.

*
Beyond what is
said to what is, the impossible.

And you curtsy,
leaf.

2

The wind doubles
back. It carries the scent of sex
to the tree’s knot, where
you expected initials.

*

When the dead are, then
you become
                           petrified
wood the superstitious knock on, wanting
inside. Igneous self
                          leaving
nothing to the imagination stone doesn’t have.

*

The wind doubles up and
under: a noun with attitude,
sharp as a mother-in-law
studying the sheets.

3

Your picture is always in my head
which is in my hands.

This cathedral was completed
for your funeral.

At 12.51 the wild yonder
bruises. A lottery vendor, God

crosses the square, where you
wait. The ghost of Godley

watches from the fur of a cat,
the feather of a bird, hears the word

Extra! on the lips of a newsboy.