Finding Pan by Jonathan Cant

Jonathan Cant reads his poem Finding Pan from his new book of the same title published by 5islands press.

Finding Pan is available from 5islands press 

5islandspress.com

Fresh words brought to you by the South Coast Writers Centre

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SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hi, my name is Jonathan Kant and I live and ride on Gadigal Country in Sydney. This poem is from my new book, Finding Pan, from Five Islands Press. This exprastic poem is after the satyr, a sculpture by Frank Guy Lynch, modeled on his brother Joe Lynch, who drowned in Sydney Harbour in 1927. Finding Pan in memory of Joe Lynch. There you are. I first found you in London's Covent Garden. As an amulet in Stirling Silver, you charm me there and then, my rustic friend. You've hung a hand's width above my heart for four hundred and twenty six moons. Then today, in another garden, an antipodal world away, you startled me again. There you are, a statue cast from molten metal, casting your wry smile across this vast blue harbour. With a perfect northeast aspect, you look out and imagine that Sydney party you never made it to. Overboard, off a ferry, the full long necks in your overcoat dragging you down to the bottom, inspiring a poem by your drinking buddy, Kenneth. There you are, leaning back on shaggy haunches, with your cloven hooves and horned head, Sless's five bells tolling in my skull. The cross hangs upside down in water. There's the crux. I adopt your eternal view. Misadventure or adventure missed. When pissed, I ponder how the bottle conspires to sink the drinker. There you are. Fresh rainwater pools in the cavities of your collarbones, where perhaps a tiny bird might land to quench its early summer thirst. You take in the cruise ship visitors posing for selfies in front of the opera house. Some will come over, touch you for good luck, your bronzed arms and phallus now rubbed to a brassy shine. There you are, satyr, faunus, pan, my muse, my protector, my weakness. You're forever exposed to the elements. I think of the raindrops sprinkling my face that time I looked up through the oculus in Rome's pantheon, a pagan immersion. Now there you sit and grin and pine for someone, something long gone, drowned, never found.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

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