CK Stead on the certainty of taxes
Say I do this
Say I tell the accountant who does my tax,
or the IRD itself, that at eighty-nine
it’s too hard to get the numberings correct –
too much fiddle. Say I make them an offer –
a thousand, two at most. I was recalling
our neighbour Dr André at Maunsell Road
when a small fragment of steel got in my eye –
it was the weekend, he’d been drinking, and I watched
his instrument waver toward my eye – and stop.
‘Don’t move’ he said, loud, as if he meant it. Later
we had whiskey with Father Forsman looking out
on brown kids playing in his school-yard. He said
‘These are my Aegean Greeks.’ They were Pasifika.
One K should do it. I’ve made fuck all this year.
This marks the final poem in a series by CK Stead, on the beach at Kohi, dancing, and Peter Wells.
