Poems Niederngasse
MTC Cronin
The Law of Kindness

To produce nothing
But yourself
Is the kindest action
For the universe

When pushed
To swing like a little door
That others
May pass through

To be an accident
Of the world
So that even your name
Loses its grip

Like a sleeping cat
In the flowers
You can ignore
The lizard and the bird

How kind is the sun
To those
With enough to do
Just sitting around

How kind
The happiness of cucumbers
And the nest full
With spotty eggs

And as if no more
Than the residue
Of a dream
You might murmur

To produce nothing
But myself
Is all the universe
Expects today


Pretty Rose

        for Rosalind Brydon

Is our past a frieze we look upon
in which we see every
thing as we would have it
good
or bad?
The round vase is filled with the roses
I would have liked to have been yours
before your heart left
to find its beat.
Now together at the city train station
a small white hawk has us mesmerised...
Unlike us we think it has nowhere
to go
we think we have a right to be free
of any inconvenience!
We would not recognise an open rose
as a rose
because we come from a world
that cuts roses. Still,
it is a world I trust. The crickety night
is filled with bits of rain that fall
from the trees and the strong-bodied moths
bump our cheeks

Who was that child of yours
we never met?
Will you ever forgive
my silence?



MTC Cronin has published six books and three booklets of poetry, the most recent being beautiful, unfinished Parable/Song/Canto/Poem (Salt Publishing, UK, 2003). Her 2001 book, Talking to Neruda¹s Questions, is being translated into Spanish by the poet, Juan Garrido Salgado and a collection of her work is being translated into Bosnian by Tatjana Lukic. She is currently working on her doctorate, The Law of Love Letters  Prose, Poems, Law & Desire, at UTS. Her next book, More or Less Than  1 - 100, is forthcoming in September 2004 (Shearsman Press, UK) and another collection is due out in the United States in 2005. email:  MTC
12-03/06-04