Dennis Haskell
Dennis Haskell is Professor of English and Cultural
Studies and Co-editor of the magazine Westerly at
the University of Western Australia. Has held
a number of fellowships and visiting professorships,
including at the National University of Singapore,
Georgetown University (USA) and Université Charles
de Gaulle (France). He is the author of 17 books, including
5 volumes of poetry. His most recent collection, All
the Time in the World, was published by Salt in
Cambridge, UK in 2006, and he is currently working
on a critical anthology of contemporary poetry and
prose from South-east Asia. His latest critical book
is Beyond Good and Evil? Essays on Literature and
Culture in the Asia-Pacific (UWA Press, 2006).
After Chemo
Your hair is falling like thin rain,
like mizzle, like long, silent,
lightening snow. An invisible waterfall,
your hair cascades
or lifts away from you
like gossamer, like an inkbrush
gifting new patterns to the floors,
furring our mouths, our thickening thoughts,
our almost-said words.
In each corner of each room,
swirled across the tiles,
I find them, these networks,
these fine cobwebs of you;
they’re flowering down your clothes:
every jumper, every skirt,
even your socks are
laced with these filaments,
hair like slender moths,
like will o’ the wisp,
these fine threads of you,
drifting away…
And our lives are fastened
by more shadows
than we cast.
Your hair
lisps like autumn blossom,
aspects of the you
you used to be
on racks in the wardrobe,
alert in the trembling air:
just outside the bedcovers,
the you you were, seeming intact
but in fact
we are as we are
together, alone, as you can see
with elusive memories for company,
with your wisps of hair
disappearing as gently as breath
Eventually
The Big C
is coming to visit you
and coming to visit me.
It’s not if but when
he’ll stiffen in the doorway
blocking out all the light.
Your lack of invitation
will not deter his right
never to go away:
once he’s here
he’s here to stay.
All other subjects will become him.
He will teach your only thought
is not your only speech.
The immensity of his smile
will command your every breath,
while his metallic taste
fills your mouth,
his demeanour, his nausea
coats your teeth.
No fibre of you will escape
his claustrophobic intensity.
The intense Greek derision
of lusting body by steady soul
will make more and more sense.
All Logic, Hope, Justice
he will condense, into Luck.
Fuck those long thoughts
of your soul; his very howls
will ensure you are
a prisoner of your bowels.
You may become so attached
to him that life will prove
a poise of loneliness,
his speech a long silence
the true measure of noise,
with an idiotic,
metaphysical sense of glee.
The Big C will ask us
why are we in this carcass
whose acts prove so reckless,
which just can’t be us!
The Big C
is coming to visit you
and coming to visit me
eventually.
© 2007
Salt Publishing Limited 
