LIQUOR MAKES US BOUYANT 

By Lindsay Rabbitt 

The Bengal Engine’s Mango Afterglow by Geoff Cochrane (Victoria University Press), 64pp., $25. 

We’re smoking and drinking coffee at a table outside Victoria Street Café. Geoff Cochrane’s light blue eyes project a resigned, smiley, serious sort of look, and he cocks his beaky head and recites: 

Ensanguining the skies 
How heavily it dies 
Into the west away; 
Past touch and sight and sound 
Not further to be found 
How hopeless under ground 
Falls the remorseful day. More,,,