The Gift by C. K. Stead

Allen Curnow 1911 - 2001

Brasch in his velvet
voice and signature
purple tie

complained to his
journal that you had
'interrupted'.

I wasn't sorry.
That was Somervell's
coffee shop

nineteen fifty-three.
Eighteen months
later you and I

were skidding on the
tide-out inner-
harbour shelvings

below your house
from whose 'small room with
large windows' you saw

that geranium 'wild
on a wet bank'