A Ballad of 2026

Murray Edmond

RS: Reef Shark will be running an interview next week with the important Aotearoan poet, scholar, fictioneer and dramaturge Murray Edmond. This is a new work by the author of Fool Moon and Shaggy Magpie Songs.

A Ballad of 2026

Nostalgic for the mess we made and have

now lost mud deep water brown white skins

kauri logs floating down the little town’s

beginnings materialized at 2am

as if the 1970s were back

in sepia in the motel of dreams

my eyes pirouette a drowned sheep bobbing

by on the brackish tide tightened bladder

steady rain woken in Room 32

by the singing fridge and the gallop of

passing hooves a rider with his son clutched

tight crying out don’t you see don’t you see

have Massey’s Cossacks been out on the booze

again or is it Wolfgang Goethe in some pain

since he hasn’t been here since 1827

it’s almost a case of seeing is believing

the Church of Local History bursting at

the seams all the worshippers down on

their knees they’re only trying to please

the P Museum closes Sundays for a clean

groping in the bedside cabinet for a Gideon’s

what to do when a storm strikes and the

cocaine runs out the teabags will not do

the trick and Forest and Bird closed down

last Monday week ago my father my father

don’t you see don’t you see the John Deere

truck is rumbling past so fast it just might

explode o supermarkets o laundromats

click on the box that asks you to accept

the terms and conditions the loss leaders

are coming into town like those body-snatchers

did of old when they used to shoot the horses

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