A South Pacific Sighting of Utopia
Next to the old cloak room mirror
of Auckland’s Gus Fisher Gallery,
a melon-size piece of plaster flaked off
in the form of an island
with many secluded bays. With a felt pen an art lover had inscribed
a snow-covered mountain range
in the island’s interior that gives rise
to seven rivers and a seven-fold waterfall that irrigate a fertile plain.
At the central bay
they play grandiose games, that no one ever wins.
To the North of the island
is a compass rose,
that only ever displays South.
there is the City of Utopia
with Gaudi towers and the domes
and roof-gardens of Hundertwasser. Tramways hum past
high ceiling cafés and concert halls,
from which you can see the snow peaks; or, where the bay meets the ocean,
a whale with long eye-lashes who dreams and blows a seven-fold fountain.
On the edge of a terraced vineyard
are some hot springs,
framed in Moroccan tiles.
Chess boards drift among steam,
and inconsolable old men
like in the thermal baths of Mariánské Lázně;