A poem for Philip Matthews by CK Stead

CK Stead, seemingly looking quite at home at the Katherine Mansfield memorial room in Menton. Photo from his recently published third volume of memoirs, What You Made Of It.

A poem by CK Stead in response to a review by Philip Matthews at ReadingRoom.
 

National Anthems

16 June (Bloomsday) 2021
 

Philip Matthews says

Stead feels more at home

in France than
 

in Wellington.   My

friend Tony who

has lived in both
 

asks ‘Who wouldn’t?’

Maria Stepanova

tells her friend
 

Sasha that her poems

are an attempt

to love her
 

country ‘because

someone has to’.

Borges wished to die
 

in Geneva

which was ‘nice and

not Argentina’.
 

Joyce chose Zurich,

Pound Venice, because

they were neither
 

Ireland nor the

U.S.  Eliot

preferred England,
 

Stevenson

Vailima in Samoa,

both far from
 

home and loyalty

to a flag.  It seems

I must pay my
 

country the respect

of dying right here

but only
 

(honours to the

pandemic)

because of the Lockdown.

What You Made Of It: 1987-2020, the third and possibly final volume of memoirs by CK Stead (Auckland University Press, $49.99), is available in bookstores nationwide.