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THE ELIAS FACTOR
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IAIN BRITTON
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“What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means first of all, man exists, turns up,
appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is
indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will
have made what he will be.” … Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism
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CONTENTS
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TE WHANAU … 4
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WINDOWS … 9
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LAKE GHOSTS … 14
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RINGWOOD SOJOURN …18
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THE ELIAS FACTOR … 28
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MEMORIAL … 31
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BRONZE BLACK … 35
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THE SONNETS … 38
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THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS … 46
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ELIAS’ ELECTRONIC DIALECT … 51
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS … 55
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TE WHANAU
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reserved exclusively /
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the bedroom
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faces north / the bedroom shifts
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with the sunlight the moon’s variations
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my fingers
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streak the glass / trace
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hydrangeas pushing up heads
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the koromiko’s purple ovation / they trace
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the blades of the cabbage tree
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i lean here like my father / on the windowsill /
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hands on his hands / eyes
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in his eyes
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watching children off to school
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tossing cold-white grass /
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kicking at stones / fighting with their bags /
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i watch the summit of Maungapohatu
waking / watch it turn streets into icy water
a cloudfall of night still asleep in its black beard
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my father picks shrapnel
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from his voice / unbuckles
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his uniform and drops
down the gullet of a poppy
baptised by Spring
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his limestone labels
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dumped in a foreign backyard
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i lean here
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my eyes
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in his eyes
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daily arches of fern flourishing /
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history stalks after him (after us)
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& he sits on his bed
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& counts the cost
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of thinking for too long about the sun
his bright astral worm in the ascendency
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the summit of Maungapohatu
rubs its protuberant belly /
outside
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a woman snips flowers /
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petals flake to her feet
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she looks at the time /
his wife
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takes a vase / arranges a still life
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then sweeps a week’s accumulation
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5 of chimes
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out the door / dusts the piano
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listens to records
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of fife & drums
of Celtic natives
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licking their wounds
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my father opens letters
from a plasterer’s son
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neuron factors breed fantasies
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neighbours crack whips /
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a lady makes hats
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the drunk violinist
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plays to his wife /
suburban mateships
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career down
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the skid roads of their dreams
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the summit of Maungapohatu
rubs its protuberant belly /
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numbed
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by my body in his /
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opening more fantasies
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& i’m
by fallen images
& we perceive differently
the shadow growths
climbing into our house
into the rooms we inhabit
6 the only rooms i know
have ever known /
of stages now past
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we perceive differently
the street & who lives in it
who slides by our letterbox
the shipshape architecture of
one man’s plan against another
the fences of our mentalities
the compound covetousness
of a glare
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my father leans vigilantly
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a statue in flesh
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displaced /Anglophonic
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dizzy amongst dialects
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amongst colonial remnants
of a broken flagstaff / axed at / fought over
coloured in with crayons
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& i’m numbed
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by the assimilation / the easy process
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of slipping into his clothes /
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like prayer beads
he fondles masonic metalware
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rubs them polishes them waits for something to happen
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(a tiger moth
swoops down & state-house children
scramble for lollies from heaven)
7 he thinks of brethren / of
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shaking their hands
of the soldier he was
the plasterer he has become
the husband who stands
at the window filleted
by the slats of blinds / he is
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surrounded
by ageing whanau
brittle as bent sticks
stuck to the walls in
rigid anticipation
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(the tiger moth returns
swoops
& the children scramble again
after heaven’s sweet gifts)
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carnations float
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turban-headed & clustering /
my mother
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clips them to fit their places
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a fragrance follows /
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she puts her hands on mine
touches
the tidal habits of our emotions
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my father says
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he’s travelled beyond the physicality
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of sightseeing the world’s wonders
in our street /
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every night we eat at a kitchen table
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set for many
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WINDOWS
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window [.]
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nature / you
taps / tell me
its / you’re
fingernails / schizophrenic
at / that
the / you
glass / once
a white / thanked
face / Leonard Bernstein
with / for
black / conducting
eyes / the LSO’s
appeals / Verdi’s Requiem
to / especially
my sense / for you
of the / for you
grotesque / entirely
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window [..]
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i struggle / being
for leverage / unpredictable
holed up / & a visitor
in a / to my
red-brick / botanical
edifice / garden
in Courtfield Road / you eat
stuffed / a hot meal
with / of green
passports / transparent
which breed / reflections
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window [:.]
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my indoor / your
clothesline / headache
sags / is
with / your room
poetry / you don’t
silence / complain
fake / you sit
declarations / in the
i / tightness
take the / of
strain / a solid object
the / you talk
window / through
is a cut-out / a crack
square / in the flight
painted / path of
on / a woman’s
wood / rotation
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window [::]
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this / true
work / as a constructive
strung out / sample
between / you’re beautiful
walls / clean
resonates / anglicised
smacks of / & significantly
Matthew / useful
Mark / but i too
& Luke / recognise
Jack / the fragility
Spicer / of
& the / your cranial
Marx Brothers / moonscape
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window [::.]
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today’s / it’s
particularly / not exactly
bad / dress-up
for / time
scrabbling / or for
about / being on
the / public
windowsills / display
hunting for / Zelda Fitzgerald
microscopic / comes in
words / smoking
living in / pathogens
the fleshpot / sounding off
holes / like
of my / a best-selling
skin / casebook
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window [:::]
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in / how
the garden / fortunate
the plants / to have
do / a celebrity
headstands / in
in the / my room
frost / you
their roots / tell me
get snagged / of another
in / visitation
clouds / this man
the / reawakened you
winter’s / by
about / entering
burying / your body
oneself / as if you
in / were
clothes / an enlightened
in the / device
thickest grass / already blessed
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window [:::.]
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this / 10am
ill-fitting / predictably
self- / you’re on
confession / time
is / for coffee
really a / last night
monologue / you dreamt
inked / of
on canvas / going down
entitled / into my basement
Meeting / & under
Elias / a concrete lid
a disguised / voices
exploration / were talking
of / about us
my psychology / voices
to begin / were lifting
with / the weight of people
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window [::::]
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MEETING ELIAS
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for Cynthia
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Do I listen
and go with you
across summer fields
and meet Elias
as promised
or shall we take the short
cut and climb
the rough track
behind the house?
You say be alert
look ahead but
does he give a damn
what we do or if it’s us
or some other person
who gets to him first.
Being infinitesimal
is belonging to a beach
is somersaulting
the sand dunes, plunging
into the face
of a waterlogged relic.
In the grass close by
lies an embryo stripped
of its symmetry.
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window [::::.]
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confined / the heater
to quarters / reddens
walled in / half
by crosswords / your body
of bricks / you dismiss
i’ve / Cynthia
become a / to some
voluntary / invisible
lifer / firestorm
a flower / you dismiss
power / her
advocate / for burning
hooked on / you can’t
a solitary / see yourself
form / for the blackened
of hedonism / trees
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window [:::::]
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what luck / outside
you called / this room
this morning / London
but / is plucking
refused / at crocuses
to come in / snowdrops
you went / hints
but you’re / of new
here now / floral clocks
dressed / i’ve
to kill / squashed
or is it / my consciousness
Sylvia Plath / against
i’m talking to / the window
sucking / i’ve seen
tensely / myself
on / on the lawn
an arthritic / looking in
thumb / at us
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LAKE GHOSTS
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spot the kingfishers
the mynas the
piwaiwaka / the ghost
of Xmas Yet
To Come
the black ball
dropping into the left
middle pocket
the face
of the figure
in the window
of this house
on pumice /
spot the lingering
slit of a smile
a white man’s
slit beneath two
dark holes
where eyes should be
concealed
by tinted glasses
by the thick
magnification
of convex lenses /
tonight the lake
shimmers
its speech patterns
against the beach /
it silvers stones
Rapunzel’s gossamer
tumbles down
from the moon / she
keeps me awake
at nights
flitting amorphously
between rooms / she’s
impossible to hang on
to / by morning
she’s gone
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in a flurry of vapour
in thin tapering
lifelines /
spot the owl
in the birch
praying to
the ghost of Xmas
Yet To Come
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this elliptical
roller-coaster
determines where i sit
what i look at
who comes to my door
who i want to
speak to / the
sky is alive with
resurrected fish
i reel in my lunch
my sister
holds fresh bread
a crucifix of
sunshine / she floats
in a membranous
sheath
of associations /
first foot
last foot / i
step by her / my aim
is to sink the black ball
top right-hand pocket /
not the white one
of course / because
if i do i lose / today
my sister plays
the school girl
the spectator / tomorrow
she might play the woman
last Wednesday i couldn’t
have cared less / she
varies according to
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the lunar orbits the
different phases of
waking up / nothing
is constant she appears
whenever i choose
to hit the black ball
whenever i think
she’s staring at the
Horns of the Taniwha
pushing out of the lake
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i type a paragraph
i delete a paragraph
she appears
a figure in the window
of this house on pumice
the ghost of Xmas
Present
in this room
where words
blaze from wall to
wall coloured screens
of invented rock stars
politicians heads of state
poets evangelists Andy
Warhol Uncle
Tom Cobley and all
i type a paragraph
i delete a paragraph
the Horns of the Taniwha
butt clouds
butt buckets / rain blurs
her face
the woman in the girl
who never properly
hatched or sprouted
or felt the dragonfly’s touch or a mother’s
soft breath / she isn’t
that clear-cut any more
she lives in the monocle
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of an ancestor in the
microcosm of a family’s
pulse / she survives on
a stillborn fragment /
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after the roller-coaster
ride through
present time
the black ball potted
in the bottom right-hand
pocket / after the tui
has flown i type her
memory
across a picture
of the lake / i type
her memory from the
ghost of Xmas
Past
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RINGWOOD SOJOURN
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moles hedgehogs
hobgoblins visit
each night & leave
pyramids to demolish
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the cob walls flake paint
twists of disheveled straw
a river’s baked sediment
& more arguments
than usual
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this June i celebrate
Elias’ birthday with a
mirror which in turn
features graven images
which can’t be ignored
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the sun & moon
do my bidding
i’ve learnt to live
between the pages
adopted by touchstones
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only the yellowbrick room
ticks all the right
homecomings
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amongst the bushes
a magpie’s antics
offers a selection
of cheap second-hand
ideologies
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in winter i flip
the coal in the
fireplace / black
lumps of moveable
Birnam burn
through shadows
of unspoiled
inquisitiveness
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my introspection
is confined to the
unlocked quarters
of invented landscapes /
sudden thoughts
emerge from
ancient cocoons
bloated in sap
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lie down i tell myself
stare at the ceiling &
contemplate the sundial
shifting daily properties
traversing languages
of quiet resistance
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earlier i read
of one way
of looking
at a black-backed gull
its high-noon
voracity & a
party at the
world’s end
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THE ELIAS FACTOR
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through a tinted lens
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homicidal dancers
in the sun
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speak
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of split-red tongues
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lapping at the air
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Elias sits on the porch
in the shade
amongst the wooden orbs
of onlookers
carved in the sky
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he sits on the paepae
sucking on the flavoured rainfalls
in
his
beard
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he sits on the paepae
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showing off his tokotoko’s shadow
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flicking it
brandishing it
he listens to it
gabbling about
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Christianity
Buddhism
Ringatu
about being an
atheist
a pagan
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in love with a golden calf
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Elias’s tokotoko digs holes in the earth
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Te Wairua
o Turanga
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is a house / a room / the body
of a person who lives by breathing through
the mouthpiece of its door
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around it
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histories run their course
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the cosmos
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balances
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on a godhead
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homicidal practices
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return to haunt the skins
he sheds
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rolls up / buries /
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inside his house
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spoken words
are exchanged / Elias deals in
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persons missing / their silences
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their distances
between public places /
with epiphytic tendencies
he relies
on a certain interdependence /
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he flourishes under this roof
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under the woodworked ancestors
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stuck in this cluttered room
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i’ve come to the conclusion many people including the carved guardians squatting on
their perches their totems in the rainlight think of this moment as some kind of oracular
conversion and if played out properly Elias will brighten up the handmade carousel
which features clowns in different disguises chasing one another around in circles
around the front yard where we observe the Easter tradition of concealing chocolate eggs
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Elias’s tokotoko digs holes in the earth for his children to explore
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MEMORIAL
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curvatures shift
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a procession
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of sand dunes / ridges
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reshape disguises
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granite certainties
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remain
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of a temple slouching into its shadows
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i reach for the manual
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the list is endless
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the sun rips into each family’s name
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each knowing each
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and specks of gold become airborne
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the karaka
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drops its fruitfulness
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a nauseous temptation
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of crushed desserts
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and sharp disappointments
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i prefer the beach /
on the beach
Elias
these meetings of arguments
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of reaffirmations / these peaceful
joustings of a collusive kind
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i grab at gifts
thrown up by the sea
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the heartbeats
the inflatable souls
faces on rocks
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the temple half submerged
and drinking
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parishioners washing
amidst the whitebait
the eels
the hapuka
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from the beach / the road
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goes straight to the city / to fathers
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chained to the city / fathers
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with keys around their necks
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who once called the shots / statues
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of fathers who came out of Europe
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scorched-earth policies
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firing up their eyes
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the Square’s
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a repository
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for young people to hang out
to frolic on lawns
smoke in the shrubbery
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satisfy their loud-mouthed music
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the Square’s
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felt the fist in the dirt
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the shovels of gardeners
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speeches unravelling
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the curvatures
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of parades
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i imagine
Elias
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on the beach
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an abstract expression
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of blue iridescence
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unencumbered by the
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extraneousness of urban tempos
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in sepia
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i’m not without company
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i’m walked through every minute of the day
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pedestrians don’t stop
don’t detour /
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notice the signs
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or
the sun rolling out its blades
a census in shreds
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tossed in the sand
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5
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i’m unsure of birthplace
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residential attachments
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the root system
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growing from my feet
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i seem to be recognised only
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for these brief meetings on the beach
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these impromptu
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homecomings
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generously
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received
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a vow once captured by the sea’s grip
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is quickly shrugged aside
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BRONZE BLACK
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true the country’s ice shelves
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still melt /
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the green-lipped trees
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still strip naked /
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narratives are repeated
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on rural corners
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the day’s burnt-off particles
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fluorescently flicker
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as i cross under a chiselled
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Hine-nui-te-Po
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cemented to her plinth
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moko-browed
pigeon-blessed
standing astride an entanglement
of flags
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& afternoon sun strikes
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i approach the bronze forest
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of hard-earned praises /
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black spikes
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like trespassers
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hammered into the ground /
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i carry quotes from diaries
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strapped to my body
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under Elias’ rarefied dome
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the road to the coast
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responds quietly
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to a town’s shuffle /
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lucky the nozzle
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of the madman’s flamethrower
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has past /
lucky
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the hatching
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of a nuclear egg has past
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lucky the rain that fell like nails
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died away
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the woman
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bolted to her concrete pad
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gazes distantly
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at cloud-casts / at hieroglyphs
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surging through thermals
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i pause
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to count
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the bronze black trees
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these units of similarity
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i read texts
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discuss mnemonics
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track people’s lives by touching
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these eye-stoppers
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planted in the earth
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by gods visiting on one-night stands
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they come regularly
to care for / to clean up
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these physical gestures
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leaning like sundials /
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they respond with purpose
to the town’s phantom shuffle
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THE SONNETS
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from this room
under thatchware
the Avon unravels
& sarsen time capsules
swirl in heartbeats
in sediments
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infinitesimal life
drags deep /
the cushioned
tepidness the orange
effusion of my mother’s
sunlight filters
through breached
expectancies
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this morning’s
vermilion sky
strung out wet
& corrugated
rough-flannelled
& crustaceous
clings to walls
ladders poles
perpendicular
dreams / clings
to daredevil
leaps / small
pranks of a boy’s
inflated lungs
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masking is what i call
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rattling the cage
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of puberty’s incarceration
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grabbing another face to attach a face
meaning who am i staring at
who’s looking / who’s pointing /
!
invasive solitariness
!
closes ranks / turns pennies
!
from heaven into lolly scrambles
!
for the digestive tracts
!
of boyish games /
!
who’s masquerading as a hooded thief
!
i’ve learnt to sing
in the cage of my skull
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
40
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
my mother
speaks of
a talisman
recklessly
tampered with
!
she says
!
Elias is
the people’s
choice
fallen into flesh
a photonic
migrant
sucking
on planets
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
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41
!
!
!
!
!
from this room’s recruited moment
!
the world outside my sister’s circle
stole her breath !
& the players froze in their frames of where to put one’s best foot forward next / where !
!
to find the snatchers of moulted human skins where to stand in this precarious
situation of baby meets girl meets !
mother & father /
!
what soft player’s hand smelling of soil & fuchsias !
could my sister safely grab
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
42
!
!
!
!
!
this is the worst time of the year !
(for Elias)
!
(for us)
!
our homes overcrowded
!
families squashed in
!
the work force nervous
!
i’m told when lightning
!
plays havoc the iceman
!
skids on rails
!
he affects speech patterns
!
the gestures of villagers !
shut in at close quarters !
a textbook on peaceful cooperation
!
is obligatory
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
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!
43
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
i fumble through the gifts
of a child’s wooden box
looking for a staircase / for steps leading down to lives that echo in my ear
!
rules
/ dug out of the round
torso of a tree /
are read in the dark / are fingered interpreted
quoted aloud
!
i come from this place of stirred-up memorabilia
!
nothing’s too much / Elias ignores
the sounds of finely-tuned
!
coordinates breaking
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
44
!
!
!
!
!
!
the girl in my room
takes the reconstructive approach !
i turn on my fiction / add magic to my agenda
!
& through this halo-burnt portrait
i reach an awareness – !
where rainbows
!
are part of the hydroponic mix
where skies & hangers on
!
swap a humpbacked rawness
for something obliquely acceptable
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
45
!
!
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
!
!
!
!
!
a night- / you
time’s romp / like to do
is evidenced / what i do
by the moon’s / paint
tunnelling / girls
by its stark / flirting with
belligerence / phantoms
my face / with streetlight
in yours / reflections
Cynthia / with owls
through the / pegged
looking glass / to their trees
!
!
can’t be wrong / you see
i’ve read / as i do
about you / Cynthia
before / through the
seen you / looking glass
on the box / your face
seen you / in mine
hung up / we both
to dry / can’t be
in one woman’s / wrong
attempt at / our hands
flying solo / almost touching
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
46
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
pathways / behind you
are clogged / amongst sales people / rocks
are caught out / & fern-
after dark / clad
behind me / monuments
dancers / are brick
slip slide / homes
across floors / a pond
& into beds / white of foaming / swans
softness / a Renoir
!
!
staring / picture
at you / of sumptuous
is like / fulfilment
staring at / an
Elias / emerging
is like / appraisal of
counting / your influence to 50 / on my
& witnessing / marking time
a resurrection / to in slow / the beat
motion / of your drum
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
47
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
through / close by
the looking glass / you
human / exhibit
props / decorated
& the cast off / flashbacks
crutches / of miracles
of people / you
clutter / have
rooms / taken up
Elias says / residence
it’s possible / an in-house
quite possible / cartographer
!
!
to fly / redrawing
solo / the boundaries
to circle / for peacemakers
Stonehenge / for the
the bone planks / offspring
of Hikurangi / of mothers
to enter / & fathers
the eye / for the
of the golden- / fingerprints
king fish / of a
& not / tribal
look back / Merlin
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
48
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
i sleep / you sleep
with / green
your homilies / oceanic
tucked / forests
under / creep up
my pillow / to your
mind-matter / windows
stuff / your every-
of my place / day standing still / perceptions in your / change front yard / quickly
!
i teeter / you teeter
on the / on the
brink / uncertainty
of seeing / of decisions
everything / out front through every- / the pouwhenua
thing / sends messages
or / takes
imagining / a mental note
anything / do you dare
is there / do you dare
at all / to stand still
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
49
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
my face / through
is yours / the looking glass
amongst Pacific / you do
dreamers / like i do
flying high / you gesticulate
above squashed / communicate
islands / you talk
of fragrance / with your body
above carved / perform
dendroglyphs / vigorously
leaping / you
from girths / mouth words
!
!
Cynthia / wrapped in
has us / silence
in her sights / you taught me
she rarely says / to be like
sorry or / a night light
poses for / in the day
the man / Elias says
who lives / anything in his box / is possible
counting pixels / like the Maori
she can’t / Christ stained
be wrong / on water
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
50
!
!
!
!
ELIAS’ ELECTRONIC DIALOGUE
!
!
!
departure time
!
depicts a solitary eye-catcher
!
a wheel breaking water / its spokes
!
defying gravity
and a river’s mouth
!
nudges at the moon !
at its hard-boiled edges !
#
!
Elias
!
clusters homes against ancient walls / !
a crow-hatched abbey !
is inhabited by hunched-up !
kings /
!
Plantagenets dropped from a soundless height
!
Elias is built
!
of molluscs
!
crushed into rocks hauled from a paddock /
!
!
departure is !
waking up
!
51
in a hammock
!
#
slung between mountains / godsticks
squat
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
around a Megalithic road rage of cosmic observations
satellites store flash video links
for evidence
an electronic dialect speaks to me
i’ve begun to live the uncut dream of
floating down a river in the company
of legends in the company of rangatira
street-wise urchins pubescent Mary
Magdalenes my youth bouncing in a
zorb / a plasterer’s son chucking pieces
of his skeleton at the stars / burying his dead cat for the daffodils for the rites of spring / !
close up my father captures the moment of awakening /
i live the uncut dream of floating down a river accompanied by kayaks and taniwha fresh-water mermaids / my mother’s there too
turning space-age hitch-hikers away from the burning lonely hearts club website
for the aurora australis night show / she calls from the bridge where the time of day juggles boundaries where dream lines gather momentum and splash off boulders !
#
!
52
!
!
of this river !
!
!
!
!
an electronic dialect
speaks to me
merging with the sea
breaking sand dunes
the middens of takeaways
dumped in transit / it speaks
of people building homes under a comet’s
incandescent gaze
!
#
!
Elias
!
crams in the daylight
!
burns confessions into slabs of wood
!
for the townsfolk to feel / to memorise
!
reflect on the utterances
!
of their own breaths
!
!
i walk past fortifications in ruin !
my mother
!
stares from the bridge
!
at silhouettes
!
splashing at voices !
in the river
!
53
!
i wash the relics of yesterday’s soft landing !
in the bog of a podocarp forest
!
!
!
relics which once lived
once whispered
once had structure
my mother washes the white fingers of my father /
!
!
i live this uncomplicated version
!
of a blue planet’s ripeness
!
about to peel off
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
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!
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Acknowledgements
!
My thanks to the editors of the following UK magazines for publishing a couple of these
poems, or versions of them in the last year or so:
!
Litmus Publishing and POEM Magazine.
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