by Julian Woods
Part of the earth they’d trespassed by.
But the wilderness was furrowed,
The crops were heavier with richer yields.
To balance the scars of ‘Progress’
Were the farms, the cattle, the greener fields.
Even in the bitter struggle
For very life in the convict days,
Eager minds saw far ahead
Out of an age that is better dead.
To them we owe our easy way
The years have slowly grown –
The men who faced the vastness
Of the terrible unknown.
Feel the spirit of Illawarra –
Stories rising from the soil –
Shadow pictures grey and cold
As the plays of men unfold.
She will show her mysteries
To any sympathetic eye
Flying from the years that hold them,
Pageantry of time gone by.
IN THE YEARS
Bill Belson
They wring out our hearts
And leave us
These whisps,
These sweets of song,
These leaves.
They touch us with tender cruel fingers
In the years,
These smiles,
These eyes,
These moons.
And we with tears
And a wrench of longing,
Remember them…
And now they are gone
Like leaves.
ANOTHER VERSION OF HEROISM
Bill Belson
Heroism is nothing like an Epic Figure. The great character standing on the brink of doom, the traveller in the proud lonely places, the flyer close to the stars, the victor with the singing sword – these pretty scenes, though they stir us to passion, are nothing like heroism at all.
In the first place, the character on the brink of doom would be weak in the head to stay there and stupidly passionate to risk his one and only life in ever going near it. And in any case, history hasn’t any record of a great character in this situation. It has only selfish little big-shots putting everything on a plunge.
In the case of the traveller in the proud lonely places, it is well to remember that just behind him in a camp littered with empty condensed milk tins, and that as likely as not there is a history of dysentery behind him. Generally we get this picture through some carefully costumed city slicker – and a model at that – going to the local sandhill and posing in good story – book fashion. I suggest that the grubby explorer is as sick as hell of the whole stupid thing and wishes he was back by a nice friendly fireside with an earthly woman and an earthly vision of heaven in a plate of steak and eggs. He notes with great conviction that the lonely places are proud only when you ar’n’t in them.
And then, taking the victor with the singing sword, let me tell you that the victor who had personally done anything (and not the ninety percent of warriors who do nothing) would be wishing he had time to change his stinking linen and certainly wouldn’t be wiggling his silly sword. He would be hoping like terror that the battle would end because he was deadly scared and quite sure that the next victory couldn’t possibly be his own. He was just plain lucky to get away with it once.
As a matter of fact, such heroic figures – the Ruby type of thing – or the grim man with the bayonet – are in the long run the concoctions of war mongers and perfume manufacturers and are aimed at creating suckers or snarling ready-made fools. And in the short run they are the inspired output of a set of somewhat effeminate artists unconsciously aimed at enticing the little pansy out of the parlour and the suburban bully into uniform; they please our dear gentle ladies, and no doubt they give the artist a chance to imagine himself as something he would never have the stomach to be.
When I think of heroism, I do not vision epic figures. Rather, I see an over-worked woman hanging out napkins. Perhaps, even, the very fat man busting his boiler to catch the local train to get to his box of an office in time. I think of heroism as essentially bound up with small-timers doing something too big for them and getting the jitters about it. The frightened soldier, the man working on with the ‘flu, two people going on with a farce of a marriage because of the children, travelling in and out of the city with the obscene crowd, making the money spin out, and so on for all the trifles of the irritating and maddening day.
Nobody bothers to paint this type of heroics – the small-time monkey – faced little human in trouble. We set up some symbol much bigger than we are, doing things we would never do ourselves – unless it be in dreams – or the cinema. The symbol has always a smattering of likeness to ourselves (both it and we have legs) in order that we may make the swift and happy transition of identification.
And the sadness of it all we go on living for the epic tomorrow, getting no kick out of our very own day to day victories, missing the little beautiful things because all our models for happiness are huge imaginary symbols far beyond us. This is simply putting satisfaction out of our reach. If I put god in a worm and a piece of steak, then I constantly have the company of god, if I put eternity into today, then I have eternal life; if great happiness be a little moments laughter, then happiness I have. And if I kick out the ham actors on the brink of doom and change my picture of heroism into me doing things, then here in my own back yard I am a hero. And whatever joys I may have in heroism will be mine in a trouble overcome, in pain endured, and in a hard job concluded.
POEM
L.J. Pearce
I’ve tried my love.
She will not fall:
Too virtuous is she.
I love her more
She more denies
And more reproaches me.
So as I flame
She cooler grows
And better feeds my fire.
But if she burned,
Our double flame
Would cancel my desire.
So youth in love
Your maiden’s front
Cherish like your life.
If on your breast she ‘gins to melt,
Kiss her and say goodnight.
The Pauline Group, 19 May 1949
SAND THROUGH MY FINGERS
Roger F. Brown
The Boy:
Fling a stone
Into the cool, clear water, and watch the
Ripples widening, spreading, spreading,
See the wind-blown petals
Rocking gently on the farther shore,
And listen. Listen to the sharp cry
Of the parrot, and airwards see
The bright flash of feathers.
The Girl:
I see and I listen. I listen
And I see the hawk’s
Cold swift descent;
A puff of feathers in the calm air,
Sad, gay, feathers, falling, falling.
The Boy:
A man’s death is as swift,
But more than feathers float down
To shiver on the rippled water.
The Girl:
No, death is not thus,
For death falls not so swiftly
As the brown hawk; presage
Of its flight casts flickering shadows
Over all before it strikes,
And striking, all those about
Are withered by its touch.
The Boy:
But stop;
The moments tumble as the dancing shadows
And are gone, slipping into
The long sweep of the past,
Which is no longer ours.
There is for us
So much to see,
So much to feel,
So much to do, and think;
There is so much yet to live.
The Girl:
The hawk swings timelessly
On a breath of air.
The Boy:
I must see again
The grasses blowing on the windy hilltop,
/> And your hair; the grass-ripple
Of your hair in sun and wind.
I must feel the cold sting
Of the surf, white foam beating on
Yellow sand hot to my feet.
The Girl:
And the swaying intoxication
Of the saxophone’s insistent wail,
Surging through star-powered darkness,
Throbbing about us, but beyond.
This too is remembered.
The Boy:
All these things are to be remembered,
The trivial finding place with all else
In the hopes that are ours, with the
Things of a time we cannot know.
But think; the inevitable surge
Of all-engulfing tide advances,
Finding the secret places of our lives,
Filling the hollows with blind hate,
Sweeping away hope.
The white-coated biologist working
Into the night, the jungle of symbols
In the mathematical thesis, the whirling
Orbits within the atom’s core;
All point to the same end.
These things are not ours, the tide
Not of our making;
Hopes slip away and are gone,
Like sand through my fingers;
There is so little time.
The Girl:
The hawk hovers watching over the land;
It shadow passes over all.
SUBWAY
Roger F. Brown
One can remember the same thing with ants,
Save that they show that haste, and
That ferocity of purpose, more
Than ants could ever show.
The subway is alive with the
Ceaseless clatter of their feet, which
Drowns the railway noises from above,
Makes speech impossible.
A face brings back the same eyes
Watching carefully in a class-room painted
Cream and grey; the set of the shoulders,
The hockey field when he was tall above us
In our play.
And then from standing, I am whirled
Into the crowd for which
All time is future;
An army, and to each soldier
His battle.
CAFÉ CHARACTERS (EXTRACT)
Bill Belson
The waitress came to take his order …… His eyes took on quite a glisten, quite a shine. A soft whisper of adrenaline went running and a-cry in the soft bright way behind the lighting in his eyes. The Christ and the parlour and the teeming niceties came inhibiting in vain and lo, adrenaline flowed. His eyes were like hail- like brilliant rain. And looking at the waitress ad imaging - imagining beyond Christ and the parlour – they caught the sun – they caught five moons – and yea! AND YEA!
THE GHOSTS
Bill Belson
We are the ghosts,
Eating out our hearts,
Sitting out the years
With quiet sad brooding eyes,
Away from the song and the laughing loud heart.
We ghosts we
With words to tear our throats
In such silence.
We sit on here
While the fat laughing world goes by us
With its blood and tears,
And the woman has twins,
The young flesh grows old.
We sit on here,
Growing old too,
Regretting the absence of zest
Brooding that there is only silence.
We sit on here,
Regretting,
Lost in the tangle of words that have no meaning,
Sad with our bitter-sweet ghosts.
We sit
While the tobacco burns,
And the small slim wind lingers on the frail curtain,
And a blue elbowed night broods on earth’s table.
We linger,
Pale schizophrenes
Lost in twining ghosts, in words,
In oceans of sound,
Glimpsing stars off a dunghill,
Treading a circle round.
We are, in a way,
Pickled flowers in a dry vase,
Stale lamps in a night club
As they peer at the gay circle,
Wondering why it smiles.
AT SENLAC
Neville Kirkby
Proudly the White Horse
Paws the air,
Wishing for battle to swirl
Beneath its tread;
And stirring to the fretful gusts of wind,
Eyes the waiting warriors
On the plain.
Horse, proud horse, woven with magical thread
Into a banner of blue –
Blue of the sky, symbol of greatness…
Banner, come from the sea beyond,
Wrought of powers mystical
In ages gone, and carried by
Warriors into the land!
Odo, Bishop of Bayeux,
Holds service in the Norman camp.
From where he stands, he sees
The waving Wessex dragon flag,
Crimson gold, and glinting
Jewel-drops of fire in the light of a new morn.
This, the warrior bishop says,
Is demon-blessed:
And each man vows to slay
Those who flaunt God’s purity.
Yet there are those that think
Of how to die, but yearn to live –
Men who feel a coldness round
Their hearts, and see un-natural things
Lurking in the low-lying mist,
Sombre, grey and deep.
They talk by themselves
And their footsteps are a ghostly harmony
Treading time away…
Taillefer, soldier-minstrel, lovingly touches
The strings of his harp,
Waking music in the heart of war;
And his own voice, that natural instrument,
Sings a tale of chivalry
And comfort.
Duke William, roused by the climbing sun,
Marshals the army
To fight beneath the blessing of St. Peter,
And their ensign, holy, papal-blessed.
The harp and voice are hushed,
The clank of steel on steel
Sounds in their stead.
The minstrel, armed and mailed,
Is troubadour no more.
William of Normandy
Grips with an iron fist
The hilt of his brand.
Orders pass from line to line;
Odo swings his gold-wrought axe,
Ready to strike for the faith;
And Taillefer, thinking of horse of old,
Takes joy in the movement of his steed;
Tall men, wing-helmeted and fair,
Mount the palisade upon the hill…
A rhythmic thunder rolls heavenwards,
Sunlight flashes on clustered spears,
And busy bloodied spurs.
The wave of horsemen crash upon the Saxon shore,
Foam up in a whirl of steel,
Recede, re-form and charge again!
The minstrel’s heart awakes;
He sings of Roland of Roncevalles,
The right of serving one’s own true ideal
Even to death, and after death to After-life.
Sweetly, clearly, his song rises,
More powerful than a trumpet call.
And smiting, Taillefer in his turn is smitten
And sinks down to rest
With the song upon his lips.
…And it is said by some
That his spirit stayed that day,
After the body was still,
And saw the crimson dragon fall
At the sunset of the Wessex kings…
TALKING WITH STARS IN HER TEETH
&nbs
p; Bill Belson
Simper, simper …
Strong …
- I wave my fingers strong
As steel,
As god.
Simper, simper …
Sad.
I droop my eyes,
Modest,
Shy.
Talk …
Talk loud …
Garrulous and loud.
I said,
I told him I did …
The coloured ribbons
On the trellis
Waved and trembled
In the backyard breeze,
And a small cat
Went mewing …
Far away I saw a star
Through a battery of toast strips
And clamping jaws.
And the eternal tinkle and trim
Of a musician’s white keys
Told me how shut-in we were –
How encompassed by coloured streamers
And white keys,
We were.
Whimsical droop of an over-fat jaw,
Forlorn as a boy in a tall chair.
Nodding wise head
And a roving eye
To see –
To make sure –
That everyone understood
How wise she was,
And how she knows
All earth’s sorrows and joys,
And how, in this little can of a place,
She was living them out.
Between her talking jaws,
I watched the star
Sneaking into this hemmed-in -
This white-keyed
Jangling.
SHED
Bill Belson
Her buttocks were as wide -
Oh, so wide…
And presently she crossed her legs
And lit a cigarette,
Sucking it most
Consciously.
I saw a child
With wide bright eyes
Watching stars.
The fat lady,
The one with the huge chest,
Was looking at her bill,
Thinking how dear it was
To sit here
In her summer frock
In the company of white-keys,
Blinking her knowing eyes,
Crossing her legs
And looking -
God!
How wise!
LOOK NOW
June Hartnett
Look now, how the sunlight laps the window ledge,
And the wattle in the bowl
Takes September’s fire to that dark corner;
And there SHE lies who will soon be dead.
-- Her youth and mine were twined together
Like two stems of ivy on an old red wall --
But there she lies now.
Time’s scratch upon her forehead
Is the furrowed echo
Of the grooves Time’s hand has etched
Along her sweet-wax throat.
Her hands are blotched and veined,
That once, upon their finger’s ends,
Wore each its own five pearls;
And blurred her eyes
That my forgotten words
Made glow
Like fire in the opal’s heart.
Only the twilight now
Lurks in her hair.
Her skin, that held the tint
That hides in the white-rose heart
Is now the aged-in-ivory parchment
Where Time has scrawled his petty repetitions,
That pain has smudged and fear has crumpled…
And His soul lies in the window ledge,
Ready for using.
There were rich-textured hours
Of hands’ and lips’ community,
Shared nights, and days, and years.
And all remaining are my memory’s
Tenuous fibres, and her last swift decay.
She is but little now.
We shall both be less.
And all I see is youth’s apostasy,
And the sun upon the window ledge.
UNSEXED
Winsome Latter
Poor little bitch,
you stand in the triumph of the knife,
desexed,
and turned aside from
Nature’s flowing stream.
Less than the smallest bee
that swings to join
in wisdom’s wake,
the mighty surge of life.
No yearning breasts for you
to give sweet milk
to some small doggie world,
no ecstasy for you to feel
puppies fat and warm
against your heart.
You will not sound
the soft love growl
reproaching some excited son
for biting at your ear.
You’ll never know the dear content
Of washing time,
Of drubbing clean your puppy flock
for pride’s display;
or this
the feel of tiny clutching paws,
as slithering forms
play games along your fur.
He is not man
who held the mutilating blade,
he made of you
what he himself becomes,
through his damned deed …
a thing!
SPANISH DANCE
Reba Ginsburg
Black, black, with a crimson lining:
Sweep, leap, dark hair shining;
Bend, blend, in a curving passion,
Framed in the loop of a rich skirt twining.
Dance, glance, with a rhythmic swaying;
Round, round, ardently obeying;
Black, red, in a moon of colour,
Splashed with the sound of castanets playing.
MEMORY’S CARGO
Reba Ginsburg
In thought I see
needles of stone that scratch an oriental sky;
and with them
comes a cry as old and faint as Allah,
drowned in distance.
Three figures, veiled, pass through the haze,
are lost among the writhing mass of little streets,
and far into the background of my mind
they pass inconsequent.
I have forgotten … … …
Only pictures live, sent back by Time:
refuse left behind by memory;
a nameless cargo that the mind holds still
as if, caught in a cobweb, these last shreds
hang tattered by the breeze of thought.
Some tang of colour clings and will not fade,
but name and meaning are illusive.
I cannot follow them, but only in the quiet hours
shake out the web, and look
at these lost phantoms.
Thus they took their way
under white towers of eastern pride, and thus
they vanished.
THE GOLDEN WHISTLER
Reba Ginsburg
I have sung songs that lay,
pearl-tinctured on the evening;
songs that fell in star-drops on the gums
and blossomed there.
Into the bush I have poured melodies of silk,
cascading down sun-placid rocks,
rustling through dim gullies,
and gathering in iridescent pools in cool hollows
where idle sun-echoes
strike silver in the sand.
I have sung songs
from the sun-drenched hills;
songs falling in compassion on the amber plains
and filling the billabongs with forgotten magic.
But now my songs are done,
and the bush waits, lonely and quiet;
my voice is a memory,
glinting on the bark, stirring the leaves
with a furtive tenderness -
and only th
e wind cries through the listening gums.
GHOST GUMS
Reba Ginsburg
Where the green tide breaks against the hills
In a foam of wattle, and silence
Takes the world for sleeping:
There, shining under the moon
Like spirits floating
Through the green and shadowed hills
The ghost gums linger, worshipping
The stars.
Lean, cloud-bodied, alert against the wind:
The only things waking;
Pale reincarnations, haunting
The bush, where once they moved,
Strong-limbed, gleaming
Black shadows in sunlight,
Hunting.
TRIBAL IMAGERY
Winsome Latter
Old wrinkled one,
Nodding by the dying embers of your fire,
I Nadarna,
Daughter of your first man-child,
Bring you happiness to share ……
Last night I dreamed
I saw a water-lily, growing
On the desert plain, past Nullanum,
Far from its gentle water home.
I stooped to shade it from the burning sun
And brushed its sadness with my lips,
And crouching there,
I felt it slip into my heart.
O … ee … old mother,
I have a flower now,
Hiding from the angry sun
Within my form.
Do you hear the petals moving there
Against my heart?
Soon it will leave the garden of my flesh
And lie upon my breath
Transformed,
A man-child of my own.
Old one, do you sleep?
You are so cold and still ……
Still as the paling star above the wind ……
TOKEN
Winsome Latter
Have you ever seen
In half-dream consciousness
(That leans upon the waking mind)
In early dawn time of the coming day,
A misty image
Designed across the purple darkness
Of your sleep’s tranquility?
An image some enchanted knowledge makes your own,
Of starry heights you have attained
Throughout the night;
Of cloud-built cosmic slopes you climbed
With beings clothed in light,
Near and warmly comforting ……
The image of a midnight sun,
Soft-glowing in a frame of velvet space, star-grained,
That seems to be the dwelling place of Gods.
Perhaps you have:
This is a token you can hold within your heart,
Against the daytime doubting of the intellect
That reasons to disprove the soul’s release,
When death identifies our flesh with dust.
You hold within your heart
The image and token of your immortality!
TO THE EARTH
Winsome Latter
When you have spilled your virgin dawns
Along a thousand years, like meteors,
And gathered unborn islands from the sea
To grace your form …… I will return.
Return to hear my tone of destiny
Echo through the running wind
On fragrant slopes;
To seek again the living mysteries
That wisdom shields behind your measured ways.
I’ll come again
To satiate my spirit with the fires
Of all your loveliness and life,
And strange desires.
Ten centuries
I’ll hold my consciousness,
Within the vibrant womb of space
Then incarnate …
And feel the grass about my feet,
The friendly summer rain against my face.
LAMENT
Winsome Latter
No more the winds of heaven sing
Of fair Olympus to the lonely dawn,
Now muted is the poem of earth’s delight;
The Gods who gathered there are gone.
No more the perfumed day
Is gladdened by the throated dove;
A heavy silence weighs the saddened air,
And cold, ah cold, is love.
The golden sun
No more reflects the beauty and the grace
Of sweet Olympian maids
To mortal face.
Zeus is expelled …… to Pluto’s regency!
Banished by the subtle minds of men
He haunts the shades of cold eternal night,
Powerless, with only aching dreams
To tell him of his lost Olympian might.
But we, who stripped the Springtime from the slopes,
And quelled the laughter and the song
That danced along the breeze, earth-driven,
Who stilled the floating music
Clothed in tones of coloured light,
Have rent the rainbow
Arching man to heaven.
And with solemn dignity
And hearts mechanical,
Have raised another God to rule our worth;
And now, in place of Zeus, a mighty robot sits,
And creaks his orders
To a jerking earth.
BLUE MOUNTAINS
Winsome Latter
I would rather scan your loveliness
This, way…
Eyes passing by the darkening foothill,
to watch the beauty of you
in this silent hour,
than intrude myself.
This way…
my eyes can mirror back to you
pink veils of sunset
draped about your pensive brow,
and all the petalled clouds
that nestle down
against the blueness of your gum-tipped gown.
From this distance
I can know your solitude,
Can sense your need of sympathy:
Reclining here,
I understand the deep affinity
Of you and me.
SANCTUARY
Winsome Latter
I have watched and wondered
Why this street should swerve,
And suddenly
Escape the thronging highway through the town
To rest beside my window here,
And seem to have no purpose
Save of beauty in retreat.
And yet, why should any purpose lie
Amid the broken stones?
Wondering I sit, while the distant traffic sings;
And then the wheeling pigeons
Answer my perplexity
With the fluttering down of tired wings.
VIVIDLY TO HOLD
Winsome Latter
Bloom of wattle distilled from the sun,
Threading the gully’s shade …
Vividly to hold this lovely view
Of brown and gold and green,
That I might fold between
The canvas of the heart and eye,
This image, to endure
Beyond the natural span of memory.
So will eternity be draped,
Though it be desolate and grey,
From the gallery of my earthly dream ……
When the world has claimed this flesh as dust.
Light.
Light is the garment understanding wears,
The substance wisdom owns and uses
To reflect within the prism of the mind
Forms of warm and lovely colouring.
Through light,
The vision of the future
Stands in silhouette
Against the present grey horizon,
Lucidly.
O argent light flood my soul,
Flash forth from diamond starry ways,
Speed down a myriad miles through ebon clouds
(Enfolding with your mastery the gift of Truth)
To rest within my heart …
Until in prayer,
Searching in the darkness of my soul,
Faltering through doubt’s confusing gloom,
I find, beyond the shadow of myself …
Your radiance!
SOME VERSES FOR TWO LOVERS
F.H. Burns
If you should journey through a forest, when the winds
Howl and snows beat down, or should your way
Lie across savannahs of hyacinth and cornflower,
The falling white will muffle the steps
And the blue petals will cover the prints;
But do not look behind!
Gipsies often talk nonsense, conjuring
Out of crystal
Dark and light,
And perhaps a circle;
But the voice from above decrees.
So when you feel the magnet’s pull
Hasten and heed the voice; when skies moan
With anger, change your steps towards the hill.
Dispute not the ballots,
Arguing the disposition of seats, the numbers
Of tickets and forms:
The worm in the belly and the nectar in the mouth
Are also part of the journey.
For you Heliodorus, have come far, though
On the way you groaned and stretched. Desire
And death fought in you,
And on the next hill the vision of fair women.
In the poet’s mind you learned of one who also
Wandered.
Indecision and strife were yours, Depphinia,
Ancient faiths and blood to taunt
And try you:
And the taunt of one who also was uncertain.
But you were certain of one thing;
That the gold was sinking onto the sand, and the rivers
Were fast running out. Moons are far apart
And with them the tides. While the rivers lie low
On the sands, then take the gold. It has lain
A log time
Since the day you looked on the lilac, or, in
The silence yearned to music, while blossoms, graces,
Fell from above; since the day too looked on the sea,
And walked heart by heart near the city. Tears
And pearls, syrup and gall: what is joy
But these? Yours may it be
For my wishing.
NO RAMP OF ROME
F.H. Burns
As I stood by the casement, over the court,
Savouring the sun, and the still glory of the fountain
I saw you mounting up the palace stairs -
A figure dressed in silk and dove-grey pearls,
Glistening like a larch on a morning in Spring.
But between us was raised up a wall,
Not like the golden towers of Constantine
Nor ramp of Rome, nor China’s endless bastion,
But a barrier of hates and fears, of shyness and pride -
Family against family and your god against Mine -
My heart grew weary behind the velvet curtain
And watched you gathering lilies
And singing like a naiad of Wagner.
IN SEARCH OF PASSION
E.H.Manchester
Pentecost to Calvary -
Fragrant in fleeting memory,
Hid from desire in elusive phantasmagoria,
Be within my entity unbounded,
Slow moving forward, pausing to ascertain
That which is contrary.
Runic adornment,
Ordinal indices;
Follow with loathing with love repudiate.
Crown you the hypocrite, the fool you lapidate.
Give me the heriot - the heart of the heresiarch -
the victor in chains
Hail thou Ephesian!
No more in the morning the odour of sanfoin:
the Salii rule where the oxen have trod.
Shem is triumphant in the land he abandoned
And no sistrum shakes shakes for Isis.
THE HYMN OF THE WHIRLIGIG
June Hartnett
Around and around
Within my skull,
Without a sound
To others near ……
A whirling panorama,
A jig-saw thrown awry
A stageless, noiseless drama,
A tortured fantasy.
I hate! I hate! I hate!
(Can’t you hear my scream?
My fate, my fate, my fate
Has taught me this mad hymn).
A whirling twist
Of fortune’s wheel.
Spun through the mist
Of ageless space,
Twisted my reluctant flesh
And moulded with some anguished soul
Wandering in that wilderness.
A grinning deity above
Placed it here to see it squirm,
Joying in its torturings -
A bloodless pin-transfixed worm;
Placed it in the wrong land
With all the things beset
That it hated:
Ignorance, coarseness, apathy,
Intolerance, taunts, lack-sympathy.
As if this were not enough,
It gave a glimpse of glorious things,
Of life that hating soul desired,
But grinning still, the fiend denied
All those things eventually ……
But a knowledge that infinite striving
Had no effect, no force for driving
To all those things.
(Old Tantalus would have understood
I’ll see him there for ill, not good)
I hate, I hate, I hate.
Around and round
The whirligig,
To those outside.
Within my brain
It screams and mocks.
(The waves are beating
On the rocks,
Remorseless, pitiless, harsh.)
A WINTER NIGHT-PIECE
June Hartnett
The wind howls like a demoniac spirit,
And dies to a wistful throat-caught moaning,
Beneath the gusty rattle of the rain:
Rising and falling,
Falling and rising,
In the chill ecstasy of winter;
The ecstasy that has fallen
On louring clouds and rain-blurred windows,
And wrapped the world in a sobbing darkness:
The chill grey breath of a darkened season.
The wind’s stormy hands shudder the world.
TREE
June Hartnett
This green-browned Autumn found
The hollowed furrows round her feet,
New-stitched with lambent rows
Of young wheat growing lustily.
For joy in a fecund season
Her straight trunk were a sheathing robe
Of glowing violet and creamy gold.
But round that trunk she wore,
Axe-bitten, a betrothal ring of death,
And from the circlet oozed her golden-amber blood.
Her leaves
Had lost their sweetness with the summer,
And hung in dry despondency,
Toys for the capricious wind.
They said her roots had swallowed
Too much richness.
She stood;
Beauty fallen to utility.
And yet, perhaps, in a satin dawn of summer,
Before the brightest light has flowed
From the hills to the rustling ripeness
Of the wheat, there shall I see
Half-real in the half-light
A mist-limbed effigy of Beauty,
Silver-crowned above the nonchalant grain.
BLUE NIGHT
Bill Belson
Blue night
Came down with a soft mantle,
Down on skylights,
Down on green ground.
She came down like a whisper,
Down like a quiet bird:
She came like a shadow.
The tired trees have shut their eyes,
The laughter has gone out of the river.
The old horses have stopped straining and sweating:
They are at last at ease.
And the birds that fly on and on in the heavens,
Are too taking their ease.
Blue night
Is welcome on the skylight:
We are all waiting,
And waiting,
For our ease.
THE LITTLE FALSE FLAME
Bill Belson
In our modern world, under he searching gaze of science and under the crush and grind of the forces of annihilation now set loose, many of our cherished beliefs have been called false and thrown out …… Perhaps a lot of them were false. But if our science and probing thought cannot give us something warm in their place - if they have only coldness and its heart-break to give us – then we must be pardoned if we are sad and even fearful, as one by one our comforting lights go out …… In the gathering storm, our culture is like a little flame in the huge and pressing darkness.
Cold is the wind,
Dark is the sky,
Weak is the flame,
Furtive the eye.
Oh the tumult ringing me round,
Oh the desolation,
Oh the death that is come on the earth,
Oh the darkness and the gloom.
Dry are the leaves,
Dead is the ground,
Small is the flame
We are gathering round.
Oh the terror, the fear un-named,
Oh the annihilation
When the little false flame
Goes out!
Moan wind, moan,
Wail to the desolate sky.
Grope, grope,
In the cold, in the chill,
Blunder in the darkness,
Squirm in the earth,
Blacken with the leaves.
Where shall we find another,
When the little flame
Goes out?
THE MOUNTAIN
Bill Belson
The far mountain is alone:
It has lifted its tall head to the clouds,
And is above me.
Yet sometimes I feel
That I have taken wing,
And flown far beyond it,
And above its wailing crags
And the crests of cloud at its summit.
BACK TO EARTH
Bill Belson
I climbed once more in the tall tree that grows on the top of the hill. The boughs were cool on my hands, and soon the air began singing. “I am high above you, ground”, I cried, “and I don’t care for you at all”. The little blades of grass fell away, and the earth was only green. Something moved below and I said: “You may creep on the ground, but I am king”. The leaves began whispering and a soft wind blew in the boughs.
Down below I could see the small town in dismal greyness squatting in the hollow. “Down there”, I said, “ are the people with their cooking pots, locked in their dark houses with only windows for looking out. What do they know of the things of the field and the cruelty in the grass and the fall of blossoms and the tall limbs of trees? Nothing! And I alone am king and have climbed high where the birds are and have heard the singing breeze”.
The earth was stretched beneath me. It went on and on. But somehow there was always a horizon and beyond it I could not see, peer though I did. “I shall climb a little higher then”. But up there the boughs were thin and all asway and I grew giddy looking at them and took a harder grip where I was. “It is one thing to be a small king, but oh, so lonely to be king of all”. But I began to feel lonely as it was and I climbed just a little lower in the tree.
Clouds came over the sun. The air grew cold. In the stillness I heard all earth’s sound coming up to me with its conflict and its wailing. I heard the noise of battle in the grass and it filled the air and beat upon my ears. The earth was growing dark and a cold wind shivered in the leaves.
The lights came on in the houses in the hollow. And then I climbed down, saying: “On these winter evenings, it is so cold in the tree; I am a little thing coming back to the ground”. The leaves were moaning high above me and now it seemed to be coldest of all things to be king in the tree.
I walked to the little town in the hollow here the windows were warm with light and the people were talking and making laughter. And then all the coldness went out of my heart, and I ran within, to my people.
THE UN-NAMED (After The Buddha)
Bill Belson
I am weary of chanted ritual,
Weary of whispered tales,
Weary of singing psalms.
And sick with longing,
And sick without god.
I am not for ritual,
Not for idolatry,
But god,
Not for temples
But the rude air.
I quest the bodiless, the dreamless, being
Known fleetingly and longingly in rare moments;
I seek what is beyond words,
Beyond understanding.
I seek past the restless end of reason,
Beyond the veil, beyond eternity.
I seek peace,
And an end to weariness and tears and yearning
And the terror of friendlessness.
I seek past anger and its flames
And the sickness coming after;
The cockerel cries of men
And the strutting and the ravings
And the endless I.
I go beyond the horror in the blades of grass:
Teeming insect life shocked into cannibal death,
Poisonous, slash-mawed, jaw-to-jaw;
Beyond the terror over the full earth.
I am turned from the clamour
And the show of glory
And the sparkle and the splendour
And the tumult of barking.
Come then, with me.
Leave man’s countless sorrows;
Come out from city dives,
Out from their gutters.
Poor unschooled urchin,
Hard-eyed in their maze and babble of hopelessness –
Come out, poor child.
Come out from the drab tenements,
Out from the chores,
Out from the agony of tears,
Out from the meniality,
Out from your sickness with each other.
Come, then, sad children;
Come, then, you bent people, dreary eyed.
Poor man, toiling up the painful ages,
Mazed with shadows and sorrows and tears.
Evolving – yea, but slow;
Walking up the long ascendancy -
Yea, but slow.
Long, long, is the way we mortals go,
Weeping and smiling and heaving sighs
And puzzled and longing.
The pressure within will be out!
Heed it!
Let it out!
Come forth from the gloom of the hovel;
Turn, turn!
The east is flushed with flame
And the sun will be risen.
The ego of shreds and tatters of perception,
Flung together in the whirl of living,
Is at death no more.
This I the bombastic is no more;
This I the hungry,
This I the lonely,
This I the strong,
This silent I -
This flesh-loving, this sensuous,
This forgetful I -
This ferocious, this boastful, this conceited,
This proud, this merry I -
This I the impetuous, th
e wild, the free,
This inglorious I,
This trash,
This bundle of flung tatters,
Will pass with the I of dogs and swine.
This I, this ego of tatters
Is no more than tatters.
What is flung will be unflung.
I partake of the universal nature of things;
The oneness overall;
The drop of rain gone quickly to a pool,
The pool to stream,
And the river accomplished in the sea;
A million slow-founded mighty laws
Wrapped in one great governing overall;
The power of nations welded in one;
The thoughts of eons and worlds recounted and purged
And wonderfully come together;
My wife and I as one;
Our friends joined together;
The sands merged in one;
Speech all mixed in one,
Song and laughter,
Sorrow, joy,
All intermingled,
Interknown,
And one.
And the wind puffs dust from the mountain MAW,
Dust from the plain,
Dust from the withered straws,
Dust from my heart;
Dust unflung,
Dust from the eternally unsung glories,
Unloosed, undone;
Dust from the entities,
Puffed by the wind
And merged in one.
A common end for birds and leaves,
Plucked down from the heavens
And in dust dismembered.
A common end for kings and bees
Plucked out of the swift days
And in dust unremembered.
The universal quality
Called ‘creation’,
Called ‘being’,
Called ‘soul’,
Is merged in all things;
It is horse and ant and tree and king,
Vine and pillar and tattered string;
A quality like water,
Universal,
And unloosed, joined together.
It will be balm to ease your wearying
Restful balm;
Quiet to quell your torment and your unbelief,
Quiet to settle you.
It is guidance to guide you,
Light to sighten you,
Strength to exalt you;
It is singing in the heart at sunset,
And singing in the coolness of dawn,
It is the sense of quitting clay
And yet intensely,
Impersonally,
Being.
Quiet in the tree world,
By the pool,
Unmazed -
Stirred within.
The dreamy imagining of mind were through
And my being,
Merging with the spirit of the hanging leaves,
Being with the quality of pools,
Was uncontained,
And huge,
And there were no leaves and no pool
And I was long forgotten.
I have sought in unknown places
And in city leaves,
And since I sought with earnestness,
In earnestness have I been received;
In crude stones
And the utter sea,
Received, received;
In grass and gentleness received.
By the ripple flow tinkling with laughter,
Huge within;
Prone in the starry night,
Sing-souled;
Vagrant in the booming lone heavens,
Terribly unflung,
Awakening with tears and loneliness;
Moving with the leaves, wind-blown.
Breathe the deep sea
With moan and madness;
Stand crag-high on unkempt stones,
Wild in the gale,
Scream-wind in my clothes;
With beaten cheeks turn seaward,
Sightless - gazed,
Deep breathing on the beating gale.
In river glades
Cicada-shrilly-sung,
Warm in the beamy sun.
………
From hovels and churches and weary lives
Came dirt and trash and graves;
From the garrulous crowd,
Garrulity;
From conviction,
Sham.
But I have sought in far unknown places
And in city leaves,
And in my earnestness I have been received.
In books and running tides,
And bright bright children, wonder-eyed;
And windy upper limbs of trees,
And kindly smiles,
Received.
Ah, come now, look with me;
Come out of city dives
And villainy and hate and lies and tears;
Away from the throaty psalms and the poor fear of ending.
Come out, poor child,
Come out from the drab tenements,
Out from the greyness and the unshed tears.
Come, women, from the meniality,
Out from the dust and the disease,
Out from your sickness with each other.
Come then, the aged, death-bound, weary-eyed.
Come, turn with me,
Turn, turn about;
The road is unending,
The vision is high;
The east is flushed with flame,
And in an un-named glory will the sun be risen.
THE FLING OF THE THING
Bill Belson
In the swing,
In the fling,
In the bosom throw,
In the grasp of eternity
Tomorrow;
Racked through the rotten roof
With a glimmer star
And a hope in a dying heart
And a chord
And a chord
Repeating in the night,
In the deafness of today and tomorrow.
Walk the boards of the earth
Crying: “Glory road!”
Crying gay stuff.
In the croon of the thing
And the swing and the swirl of the thing,
With a fling of a wing
In the heaven sky,
Grasping at the moon
Went I
YET I WRITE IT DOWN
Bill Belson
I lifted my eyes to the heaven-sky,
Exulting.
In these rare moments there are no words,
But I write them.
Why,
In the whisp of today,
I should not just exult,
I cannot tell you.
Unlike the birds gone athwart in the air
And seen no more,
I must must not exult alone,
But set it down.
The ages are full of paper
And words:
Reading them does not lead to exulting;
Writing them does not preserve me -
It does not enshrine them or me.
And yet I lift my eyes to the free air
And then, in a moment,
Write it down.
IN THE HASTY TASTY
Bill Belson
Sitting there, I watched an old fellow,
A white-haired going-bald old chap,
Wiping his forehead.
And saw by him some derelicts equally gone
In this tawdry place.
And I wondered if perhaps out of the heart-yearning,
Out of the wander of my time,
I too should find my way here,
Wiping my forehead,
Going bald.
I wondered if out of my restless heart
And soul-searching
I should as surely blast away the warm moss
And the fireside of sweet illusions
As I thought perhaps
That this fellow had done.
Against the surge in me,
The cry for eternity and youth in me,
This old fears grows,
Beating its cold hands
On my frozen walls.
Crying: “I am desolation
Come to scale you -
Come to blast into you.
I am the wind to scatter you”.
Against the oath of a million tomorrows
I hear the Wurlitzer
Turning in a spin without meaning,
And wearing down -
With all its silly jargoning,
Wearing down …
And the old fellow goes out,
Wiping his thinning white hairs.
BUCOLIC
B. O’Sullivan
The shadows are long on the stubble fields;
The white clouds sail in an escalator line and
And never deviate from the course;
Their shadows move quickly over the paddocks
And up the roads; they darken the fretwork of the gums.
The clouds sail awry, mount
In cumulus above the hills, and disappear.
These do not fall like leaves, wraiths in the sun,
But come as the shadows of tanks
Advancing in the desert, and though the squadron persevere
In the straight course the formation, the shadows
Are inclined to flux, watchful, baleful, in momentary respite
To the quiet sands. There is no relief, but a breeze trickles
Up the gully, evaporates on the plain. A wind may
Shuffle about the house, but we watch
The black shadows on the bleak land, look
For the smoke that will rise in the afternoon.
Red cloud at sunset, and in the morning
Dark, when only sunbeams sing
And the burnt earth is silent, trees droop or rustle.
For there is no song here, where the sheep never
Shift from the shifting shade of the leaves,
Wait all day for the lorry at the paddock gate,
At night turn to the headlamps
That hum and toss and flicker in the low hills.
For we have not too much, the vanes of the windpump
Are stopped, brown water is gone. The sun
Burns the earth and lightens the clouds.
They rise
High on the wind, over the hills.
We see them depart.
INVOCATION
B. O’Sullivan
Grant me the promise of a future time
And do not grow old;
Though waters and the flying clouds grew old,
Be thou as May.
Look always on my never resting climb
And light my way.
Be thou my everlasting sun
And guard my life;
Though all the perilous earth should ‘tempt my life,
Deflect thou the aim.
Heed not all the ways that have to run,
But be the same.
Hours of love we have left behind,
And sweet days of peace;
Though trouble and lone days attack that peace,
Grieve no the heart.
Keep always our last whispers in thy mind.
WHITE FOAM
B. O’Sullivan
Take your feet along the sand
And let the white foam
Bathe them.
Loosen your bright locks for the sharp wind
To flay them.
Stretch out your gracious hand,
And forget that home;
Farewell them.
Turn your head away, forget you erred
To leave them.
Take your sandals from the rocks
And leave the grey sea
Behind you.
REFLECTIONS ON A WINDOW PANE
T.W. Horne
Subjective, introspective, I sat
Immersed in the mists of mind’s own making,
That bound me, drugged my limbs,
As if with lethe-water drunk,
Mind anaesthetic to grosser forms,
Plunged and dove on wings of thought.
The grey lead sky in sympathetic mood,
Writhed and moaned and sent
Earthward streaky drops,
Harbingers of the threatened storm.
And as I watched with searching eyes,
Striving past the grimy panes,
A storm tear nestling on the wall
Trembling, lonely in the gloom,
Its glassy journey to the ground began.
Poor dead thing
Making its tortuous path
Across the dirt and cobwebs.
A sense of oneness - of sympathy with matter
Drew me unreluctant to it;
Myself projected in siliceous dimensions,
Insubstantially aqueous
Each moment losing stature
Becoming impure, until at last
All energy expended, it mixed with clay,
Homogenous, unrecognizable and ineffectual.
Is this then all? Have I lived vainly,
Striven, fought, loved,
Merely to evaporate?
But no! For from the slimy grave,
Insignificant, not mourned,
Shall spring new life, nurtured by death,
Unspoilt by living.
WALKING
T.W. Horne
Pause quickly, the cold air hurting:
See the land folded into a frown: threatening masses
Bearded with the grubby summer snow
That looks child-handled;
Small receding remnants of patchy brown.
Here winter retires
And with impotent showers
Inspires
Clusters of flowers
Like cheap dress material.
And scribbled in the clumps amongst the boulders
The fingers of snow gums
Point to the crown of the summit,
Haloed by clouds in granite ethereal.
See the black crows gather
To pick carcasses white,
Hovering together
Like flies on manure.
Look at the hawk hanging,
Suspended in flight
Eyeing its prey.
See the grasshopper imitate water-fall spray
On elastic elbows.
And the lizard twisting out of sight.
Flirting with clouds, the sun chuckles on water
And freckles the lichen;
Sets on the cows slouching home for the night,
Swinging full udders.
Stand alone in this mountain stillness
And bathe in the light
Of a vague adolescent moon
Dimming emotional fire.
Laughter shrieks on the wind to the stars,
Fear dissolves into dreams,
Numb flesh dulls the cramp of desire,
Tears melt into the streams
And rattle away.
TIME FRAGMENT
T.W. Horne
Broad laughing day
And subtle sequined night
Can only in the dawn and evening unite.
Day sees wheeling, sun-shot spades and steel;
Through nuts and bolts the day can feel
The staccato engines hum of might.
Life and rhythm …
Till day and darkness unite.
Moon illumines silent men and tools
And the steaming sweat of labour cools.
The weapons of work gleam in her light.
Still and sleeping
Till darkness and day unite.
THE CONCERT
T.W. Horne
Conductor stands
Eternity within his hands.
Dim, delicate notes hover as bees,
Then crowd together.
In swelling choru
s render
Vibrant thrilling thunder.
Echoes and re-echoes
Through the chasm of the mind
Awakening …
Creation itself is wrought
In the infinity of thought.
One remembers
The brilliant bursting birth of spring,
Exuberant in colour,
Extravagant in laughter.
In its maturity,
Love’s exquisite ecstacy.
And solemn shoveling of earth on earth
To cover death.
Baton beats at temple
Perpetually,
Rhythm mirrored in pulsation
Constantly.
Baton in animation
Stirs sublime fascination
Then falls …
Pinnacled we burst in acclamation.
GIRL SAYING HER PRAYERS
T.W. Horne
With cigarette butts glows the copper urn.
Jagged food tins eye the moon
Along the lazy gutter slime,
Glinting white.
Winking signs depict
Full-bellied theatres sucking up their crowds
Half dazed out of the night.
A girl unbinds and sets her hair,
Mechanically thinking her evening prayer -
Her mouth is full of pins.
THE MOURNER
Gwen West
This is my hour.
His has past, swift and sharp
Like a rapier thrust.
But I still feel the wound,
And around my heart swift sharp stabs of pain.
O can it be his sacrifice was vain?
What stirs the blood - Revenge?
Not sweet.
What bitter agony besets the mind!
There are other traps to snare the feet
Of the unwary and the blind;
And other heights to climb.
And now the minutes pass.
Yet though I tremble, wither slowly,
I too must reach my goal -
This is my hour.
NEW LAMPS FOR OLD
Gwen West
When I go,
There will be new people
In this dear world -
This world that I have loved.
New people, brave people;
New ways; new wisdom;
New lamps for old.
But I wonder
In the years to come,
When Reality has ousted Trust -
If still they’ll have the magic touch
To turn all rubble into golden dust
That lay around my feet.
THE LILY POOL
Gwen West
I know a pool where lilies grow,
Where evening breezes softly blow,
And dusk there shrouds with mystic light
The water elves who play at night.
A dryad once there stooped to gaze
And caught the moon’s reflected rays,
And swiftly turning ere she fled,
With shimmering lights upon her head,
She shed her beauty all around.
……
Now lilies floating there are found.
CROSS-LIGHTS
Gwen West
Cross-lights trouble the earnest soul,
Bedim the sight;
Ambition daunted, stayed, bewildered
By their light,
And trembling thoughts half-formed
Take flight.
When storms arise, a bird in flight
Overtaken,
Upward soars its way into the night
Unguided;
Light flashes -- it falls, sight
Dazzled.
REUNITED
Gwen West
The flower,
Gathering light and dew within its glowing heart,
Intermingles
With its own life’s essence, a glowing part.
The seed
Is born and folded round as in a shroud;
The faded petals
Fall into dust, yet thus it will not perish,
For soon again
Twill be reborn, - a lovely thing to cherish.
Can it be our life
Must sometimes pass alone, or in a cymbal loud,
And reunited,
A glad spirit comes to life?
HIS LITTLE WORLD
Gwen West
He loves the little things he sees around:
Soft moving grass above the ground;
Fluffy yellow chicks, the little pup,
A bird in cage as he looks up.
But now and then his hands extend
On something larger to depend;
In his own way, he makes appeal
To understand this world is real.
The fantasy of something wise
Lies in the depths of baby eyes.
THROUGH OTHER EYES
Gwen West
You have taken me
Where scarce my feet could tread,
Without your helping hand.
To where a garden grew at its own will,
Flowering forth, and over-flowing down the hill
To reach a creek,
Which ever winding in and out,
Sang on its way, and put to rout
The road that I would seek.
With man-made wings,
You pilot me through space
To reach some height unknown;
And looking down, through other eyes I see
The rivers flash like ribbons to the sea -
Quick vibrant destiny.
The cities lie lace-patterned so,
A distance lends a fainter glow,
As onwards still we go.
As in a dream
The clouds go softly by;
Through other eyes, I see a star.
So must a diver in his ocean bed:
Intent on what must lie ahead,
He moves apace;
Quick moving shapes will pass him by
And dazzling beauty catch his eye
With sparkling grace.
You have taken me
To where my soul beats safe retreat,
And so I understand:
Whenever the sun and moon and stars shine forth,
And Springtime too is breaking through the north,
I shall be led
Through countless ways. Through other eyes I’ll see
My hand in yours: you will be taking me
To where scarce my feet could tread.
MEMORY
Gwen West
He views his life in a misty way,
As if from dream-land he never rises to greet the day.
He hesitates - his judgment is not keen:
He waits for you to come between.
Yet often in his tired eyes,
I catch a glimpse of sweet surprise;
A sudden understanding swift and keen,
That covers all the years that lie between.
POSTERITY
Bill Moriarty.
As slow as cheerless twilight falls,
I gaze in vague uneasy fear
On mighty summer’s ruined glory;
The failing light might mourn the year.
And soon a low wind begins to moan
Amongst the leafless trees, and cold
The growing eddies fan my cheek,
Chilling me, I see the years unfold.
Stark ‘neath the wintry moon I see
A wilderness of shattered trees,
Of broken spruce and naked pine,
That stretches, lifeless, to the seas.
And tearing out of the icy north,
The wind assaults the frozen soil
And howls through broken limbs a dirge
To a thousand years of endless toil.
Above, the steely sky and grey,
And ragged clouds in terror flying;
While the palli
d moon looks down, timeless -
A dead world above a dying.
The Pauline Group, 31 March, 1950
SHADOW DANCE
Roger Challis Brown
Swift-tumbling fingers prance
Among the keys …
The fleeting shadows dance,
Swift-tumbling. Fingers prance
To bid them boldly chance
Hard light’s decrees.
Swift, tumbling fingers. Prance
Among the keys ……
BARRALLIER
Roger Challis Brown
Sydney, New South Wales:
December, 1802.
My Lord,
Respecting your Lordship’s remarks on this matter, I must advise ……
He must advise; could the dry sound
of quill on parchment, the sterile, timeworn phrases,
ten thousand miles of sea to bring
his meaning home to Hobart? Or was he bound
by his commission to a scheme
which threatened failure for his careful plans,
and, worse than that, might bring contempt
upon him? For mutiny, which seemed
mere idle word, would smoulder,
flare, and, if he knew the temper of his men,
would surely through him down;
Hobart would burn his fingers then!
Months would pass
before he’d know the answer
and of long months
each day would bring a new complexity;
the problem was no insect, to be pinned for study.
Instead, the distance had him blindfold,
orders bound him, his decrees
were circumscribed by tight clauses
of commission. What he’d give
to let this rum-soaked jail
slide to perdition! He could live
in England … but enough of dreams,
for Hobart must be answered.
… in the measures I have adopted I shall persevere, knowing it to be the only means of rescuing this colony from such a state …
And such a state it had been; none
could deny he’d weaned the infant
of a thirst for rum
which might have choked it,
for it seemed
that all the nations of the earth
had merged to flood his charge with spirits.
What he’d done
to drive the rum-ships from his wharves
he’d done alone, for this corruption
lay so deep that all the Corps
would be defiant if they could but fool
him to concessions to his constant rule.
Thanks be
that Phillip had not seen his work
marred by a trio of incompetents;
Grose and Paterson, whose lax rule
had filled officers’ pockets ……
and Hunter,
who had failed to act when action
had been needed. His own work
could only check the rot.
Meanwhile, Flinders had mapped the coast
and swept away the doubts
which fogged the Chart’s precision,
so that as Governor he might claim
to rule a mighty continent! Hollow boast,
since all his powers clung
to a miserable strip of coastline;
from Sydney
he could see blue haze of mountains
flinging bold challenge to the adventurous,
a barrier which, it seemed, they’d never break,
for Hacking had turned back, daunted
by endless miles of lonely cliffs massed
to repel him;
Boas, for all his iron grapnels, ropes, and gear,
had been no luckier.
Now Barrallier had tried, sent
On embassy to the King of the Mountains …
… having taken ensign Barrallier as my aid-du-camp he was set out on a second journey to the mountains …
… his journal written in such an unintelligible hand, I have not been able to get it translated or copied …
Little use to the King! He knew
Such cramped, ill-written French was task
for scholar, and so sent it Home…
… but let the journal speak:
Many had turned back
when food ran short, but Barrallier
made base at Nattai, fifty jolting miles
from Sydney; there his party could not lack
for food. Convicts and soldiers
followed as he struggled west -
strange retinue for envoy to a king
who’d scorned all missions to his realm,
and mocked them with grim jest
of winding valleys wandering to cliffs
hung in the mists so high that
none could hope to scale them.
Long days of battle with the tangled scrub
left miles of mountain trail behind; they
climbed the range whose spurs
had awed them, stood there, mute
in wonder of the plain that held their gaze;
miles of good pasture shimmering in the haze!
They clutched at triumph then, and lost,
for morning showed another range
to bar their way, a stubborn azure line
which tossed the mist from sun-kissed peaks
to smash their early hopes.
And so they set their pride on that horizon,
crossed the valley, where
the soldiers sweated in their red felt coats
and cursed the foreign summer
and their heavy pack.
“The heat unbearable” he wrote.
Again they reached the ranges,
and a hundred tumbling creeks
denied them passage; their way
was blocked at last by sunless walks of rock
which towered above them so that clouds
and spray from a great waterfall seemed one,
and no way round. Such a defeat
as Caley was to meet in eighteen-five; nothing
but to make the long retreat to Nattai…
but the result of his journey is that this formidable barrier is impassible.
The facile words might haunt him
with vague spectral doubt, but a solid fact
was stark to show their worth. He’d proof enough
from Barrallier’s three journeys; drear records
of long hardship offered for a tart rebuff,
and some poor minerals which they’d pack
and ship to England. Worthless stuff.
Then (Devil take them) let these mountains
lock their secrets in a rocky keep
and let them rot there, for he’d send
no further missions to a court
which mocked his pride
and set his powers at nought.
Now that the weary drought had passed,
a heavy harvest promised ease
for all; which matter he must now record.
So let the coming year bring what it please.
I am happy to inform your lordship of the general good conduct of those under my charge.
I have the honour to remain,
Sir,
Your most obedient humble servant,
Philip Gidley King.
AND SHALL WE WAKE?
Gerard Hamilton
I sigh! Naïve acknowledgement to infinite beauty,
That gives my heart the throb for coming day;
That lifts a light o’er this slumbering city;
That kisses this harbour and pales the star-dust away.
You, the dawn, the reverent spendour of the east,
The delicate glory of a master hand,
Were sent to tint this kingdom with colour;
To wake a day, to animate man …
That he might lift his head to heaven,<
br />
Inspired to carry on, be brave,
Forget the troubles of yesterday,
Realize himself as both king and slave.
His destiny, his Utopia, is for his own cultivating.
You, beauteous dawn, merely break to urge him on.
But alas! This marveling mortal sleeps,
Ignoring you with worse than scorn.
O wake you young and wholesome nation!
Wake with the mind as with the eye!
Rise and wash your society with culture!
Learn and translate the beauty of your sky!
Feel the warmth of your own country’s breath!
Show your wealth in art and not in gold!
Make for yourself a new and personal culture!
Not sleep with semi-satisfied dreams of the old!
Make familiar your hand with pen and brush!
Let flow from your soul what you really are!
Blend, if you must, your music with industrial rush.
But blend it do!
For a nation without its music is a sky without a star.
Ah, the sky! Now see the array of sun’s fiery crown.
With solemn grace the mighty king ascends his throne,
And in the lofty precincts of his eastern court,
He sits to listen,
Whilst is being read the coming day’s proem.
Listen! For of what will that proem be?
Gosh! I think I hear a distant voice,
Say Austral Art shall rise!
But ah! ‘tis so faint and wistful,
I fear the message will be lost
Whilst ears are one with sleeping eyes.
THE END WAS SO SIMPLE
Gerard Hamilton
Do you know what it is like to be suddenly in heaven - to have found the thing you’ve always wanted? Well, I do. I’m in heaven right now.
To tell you how I got there, I must go back a few hours - to just before the end came. The clock on the mantelpiece in the living room, which I also use as a study, was lazily chiming five a.m. Each distinct chime seemed to break the intense silence a little more.
“What’s the use”? I muttered to myself, steeped in bitter despair and defeat, “What’s the blasted use of trying to put an end to it …!”
Here it was dawn. I had been writing feverishly all night - tearing up what I had written and starting again, drinking pots of black coffee and smoking loads of cigarettes - and still I couldn’t devise a deceptive end for a short story!
Realizing the grim truth of my inability to write, I flung the stumpy pencil down on my desk, littered with an author’s rubbish and paraphernalia, and bumpered a cigarette with such savage determination that I felt I must do something desperate, something outstanding desperate and original, and do it immediately, to capture the particular sense, or rather nonsense, I wanted in the climax of my plot - a climax that leaves the reader in the air, yet able to smile at the amusing nothingness of it all. Such an outcome is the art of successful writing.
But, ah, I might as well have wished for the moon!
You see, for me to conceive such a climax was utterly impossible. Yet if I didn’t conceive it, and write it satisfactorily, and have the story accepted by some publisher, how was I to pay the rent for a flat at Bondi, not to mention an oversize bill for electric light that burnt all night and every night, and the bins of coffee one consumed and cigarettes - my writing fuel - that can only be obtained in sufficient quantity on the black market.
Yes, I just had to do the impossible! I just had to work out an unexpected end for my plot! The bills just had to be paid! If they weren’t ……
I hastily lit another cigarette to blow a smoke screen around a horrifying vision of a debtors court.
The two hundred pounds I had twelve months ago, when setting out to learn the evasive art of short story writing, had irretrievably dwindled and success hadn’t come to me. In short, I was broke, flat. Still, I was confident that once I had a plot with a surprising climax accepted by a publisher, other plots and surprising climaxes would unfold and would come from my brain as a woman produces odds and ends from her handbag.
I reflected a Moment. Perhaps if I started another story, a different theme, an ingenious climax might work itself out, miraculously. But then, what was the use of doing that! I didn’t believe in miracles, and during the night I had attempted four different themes, and found a suitable end for none.
God, if I could only think one up - a humorous one, something meaningless and silly, but not too silly.
Think! Think hard!
No! no damn it! I give up! Another cigarette was violently bumpered.
A writer’s hell is when he is too tired to think. And believe me, I was tired. But no matter how tired I am, I just can’t relax until just something like an appropriate end has clarified for the plot I have set my heart on - for the plot I live. The pulsating life of the world at large becomes quite unimportant, non-existing; I run on a weird and wonderful kind of nervous energy that tingles through every part of my being as though I was connected to a ell charged battery. Sometimes I thought it’d be much easier and certainly more lucrative if I had gone in for opal mining.
I switched off the light in front of me on the desk, rose impatiently and walked to the windows that overlooked the jagged cliffs and the wide space of the Pacific Ocean. The delicate colouring that preceded the rising sun glowed in the eastern sky, waning the few remaining stars to faint winkles.
What splendour I thought; what majestic art and how inspiring it was. But I still couldn’t make use of the inspiration. I still couldn’t write. I still couldn’t concoct a climax for a short story. I was a flop in the literary world a hopeless failure . .
My gaze riveted on the towering cliffs. There was the end, the end to everything!
God, no! Not that way. Poison if you like, but not smashing yourself down on those water-lashed rocks, splashing yourself all over them, disemboweled, like a Christmas pudding dropped on the floor. Think of the ugly mess!
I shuddered. I abhorred ugliness.
Poison! That was the only way out!
I hurried to the bathroom, opened the wall closet and extracted a bottle of lysol which I usually used on cuts inflicted while shaving. It was empty. Then I suddenly remembered an embarrassing bill at the local store and sickened at the thought of asking for another bottle on credit.
I looked round in mounting panic. I had to make an end now, and end to worry, writing and everything! My razor, a cut-throat! No, no! Nothing so gruesome . . . . . Well, what about the bath-tub! Yes, that’d be perfect! Fill it with water and drown myself.
I turned the taps on quickly - both hot and cold - and started undressing, almost tearing off my clothes with a strange surging excitement. There’d be no unsightliness about this! And that’s what I wanted _ a clean finish - a definite end for myself, even though I couldn’t get an unexpected one for my short story about a man who worked hard in a factory all night.
I stretched into the tub, stretched out, and then smiled, suddenly relaxed.
Ah, what a perfect end to a night of hard work! A hot bath in the morning.
MORALISTS
Neville Kirkby
You are bent with a load of Too Much,
Oh debauchees of knowledge:
For, not having the freedom of will or of thought
To thrill at the feel of primal emotion
Or breathe with delight the air of Ruben’s aesthetics,
You learn to walk on the balls of your feet
And in slippered silence
Listen with ears a-cock at keyholes,
Hoping, within yourselves to catch at something,
Pummel and twist and mould it
To a pleasing ugly shape,
Point out its faults in public;
Give it to the crowd for image breaking …
For you, oh Moralists, there is one cure;
To go a-pranking with Boccaccio,
O
r drink strong wine with Rabelais.
A ONENESS
Neville Kirkby
The sound of a string and bow
Comes
Dancing and weaving on waves of air,
A soft brightness in the dark,
Warmth in the cold.
The thin high voice,
Wavering, ecstatic,
Guided by hands that love,
That know, sings of a Oneness…
Artist and violin mated,
Play to infinitude.
NOAH
Lionel Pearce
Clouds came hungry for disburdenment
Like shady souls rushing to Lethe’s shore.
Rain fell like grateful tears of overmuch despair,
Upon the spongy and insatiable earth.
The river like a parting through the city ran
And with its ebb in man had raised the scientific life:
So they smiled upon its turbid drops
Wherein the bed fumes curled
‘Like grains of gold’ they said;
And called its sluggish, folded, sleepy, surface gown
‘Beautiful’; and the town, on Sunday
Went to bathe within its shallowness
And both together were admired.
Noah, many times, walked on the pavement
By the deep empty drains
The road being washed by men who work on Sunday,
Frowning at the gift-day to these denied.
Watching the silver rivulet carry the dirt away
He was possessed repeatedly by spirits
And involuntarily looked at the empty sky.
Their wings were not given strength enough yet
To carry his will away.
At the grating across the drain
The rubbish of the people held the water at bay.
He noticed this, losing sense of the men working and the cloudlessness.
Bank upon bank the clouds move, like pews piled together;
Rank upon rank the rain falls like wheat at the binder;
The lead string grows longer and the lead will abide.
Oh yes, I am muddy, laughs the river,
But here is the mud of my mountains!
The breeze is no longer enough;
But her own innate longing for carving
Has wrenched into a thousand folds
The springiest mail of storm’s forging.
The men have their gift re-received.
And Noah, alone in the street,
Wades through the water re-rising.
The wings of the spirit have grown
And his bulk not o’erweighing
Carry him easily on
To God-like reverberant doing.
II.
Oh youthful legged girl
How your thoughts whirl
Above these stacks of stone
In the evening air!
The sudden smiles
That waves carry up to your face
And then their disappearing
And the thoughtful space!
Is not the whole of the sky
Bending in your heart!
Are you not dancing high
Like the maddened lark!
III.
When our love had just been born
We bought a white chrysanthemum.
It laughed at death as we with love
By breaking into second bloom.
Then, one cold petal turned to brown.
We changed with smiles the fallen water.
I pretended that your frown
Wanted more kisses brought her.
As the first brown petal died,
Mourning seemed the rests obsession.
Lying by your once warm side,
I felt a coldness take possession.
Now each is dead, the bloom and love;
The dust of each contains a power,
As you may find if with your glove
You crush the dead petals of a flower.
THE WRECKAGE OF HOPE
Norreys de Vere
I live in long long nights of gloom
At the bottom of a dark dark sea…
(Alive within my prison room
A dreadful fear is mocking me)…
Black waves spread over me and spread
Their fearful dread from side to side…
I live out of touch with all reality
Rocking fruitlessly in the gloomy tide.
There is no dawn, only the press
Of darkness on my blind eyes…
Only the kiss of hopeless loneliness
On my lips as the day dies…
I feel the glaum and suck of eternity
At the bottom of my dark dark sea.
LET CREEP THE SAND
Norreys de Vere
Let creep the sand, and the swift birds fly;
Let creep the sand, and eons ebb and flow;
Let deserts invade our valleys and our hills;
Let these endure; let humans breed and die,
For decay and death are all that life distills.
When my friends depart, I must arise and go.
CHILDREN OF MERCY
Norreys de Vere
Fear invades my tabernacled solitude;
I hear a million voices through the darkness say;
“Oh feed us, our bellies crave for food!
Our lives are shattered in this vale of grief!
The marrow of our bones is dried away!”
But I am blind and deaf with disbelief.
I awoke in fear adrift a crimson tide,
Loud and grieving with tormented agony,
Cries of those who screamed before they died,
Flowing down to fill a vaster sea.
My ears invent syllables of blame,
That I exploded shells and guns of grief,
That I engendered death by blast and fire.
But I am deaf and blind with disbelief.
II.
All night long I hear the companies of hell
Marching down the highways of my mind,
Rising from a whisper to a vaster swell;
The terrible trampling of a hopeless mankind.
I see the millions lost and blindly journeying,
Hopeless in their hearts as they march and sing:
“Oh! Our multitudes are swelling,
And our misery increasing!
There is anger in our bodies dwelling,
That throbs with beats unceasing!
“There is pity in our hearts for those
Who bud and blossom like the rose,
But wither darkly with the weed,
Or prematurely turn to seed.
“Oh! Our children ask and cry
That we bid these deserts fare-thee-well,
And build our cities where a stream runs by.
“But they march with us in the ranks of hell!”
THE BLADES OF DOUBT
Norreys de Vere
Why should the shadows creep,
The twirling blades revolve,
Why should doubt assail me?
Why can’t my conscience sleep,
The problems of my mind dissolve,
Must knowledge nought avail me?
This doubt worries and weakens me,
Gnawing at the heart of my artistry!
THE LITTLE YEN OF HEAVEN
Bill Belson
In the little yen of heaven,
In the moon-wind flow,
Plucking at the fleeting words in a crying aloneness.
It is possible to tell it once, and then no more.
It is possible once
And after that it is uncaught words
And untold longings.
In the small unstable infinity here,
I look out of windows
Like a child at the rain,
And longingly wonder -
Longingly strain.
One the corner crying,
&n
bsp; A hungry minded fellow crying alone -
Crying: “Come to God”.
Crying so because he needs,
Needs ground and a bastion
And a baulk of rock to stand upon.
In the gorgonzola of living well
And murmuring all a-purr
Of earth’s substantial things
And fruity cheese of today and tomorrow,
They are telling it in fat drugged pain
In the words they know -
In the tittle-tattle of a gossip of tea,
And a big stomach and a new car.
In the throb of a rhythm
And the wheeze of a symphony,
They tell it too,
A-clasp and a-throw
In the murmur of a pent up scream;
A murmur and a whisper only,
That must cry out,
That must scream
And be a-flow and away on a wooing wind
And a-twine in the pulse of silence.
Telling it so.
But the yen of heaven evades us,
And the moon-wind blows cold.
The Pauline Group, 11 May 1950
OLD MEN
Lionel Pierce
How we have all been swept away
By you kissing demons in the park.
You raised to our throats the hankering
Again, to press some spirit to our heart.
How slyly our blood moves now
In our stiff and strengthless flesh
Which once would have leapt like the plough
When the horses are young and fresh.
APPLE PICKING
Lionel Pierce
Parched by the summer’s plenteous heat
The earth lies sear.
Below the trees furnished with fruit,
The lumps are baked
That in the spring the gardener’s fork did turn.
Where men do walk
Between the leafy branches
Perhaps an apple plucking,
The earth to dust is churned.
Autumn’s milder path across the sky
The sun takes now,
In voyage from happy morn to wistful eve;
Descending yet to winter.
Each orchard-nurturing hill is now attended to
By men who would
Deliver every blushing tree
Of bounteous fruit.
The leaves are turning brown
Beside the crimson brood,
Which fills, each day, below the sinking sun,
More of the woody leafy nest.
Apple on apple bumps -
Claiming space to grow
With the continuous streaming sap
Drawn out of the dry earth below.
Passing the wide-flung gate
Enters youth after youth with empty bag;
With victory’s spirit laughing,
And glad of the work to be done.
Stepping slowly, the oldest horse
Comes with remembering thoughts:
The mild season he likes
And the apples pleasantly near.
Nothing, the cart and the boxes
To his long-trained muscles.
And pleasant the standing
While the boxes are filled by the pickers.
Each youth at the end of a row
Begins the red river flowing
Fast and faster into his bag
In minutes a-brimming.
Greasy his fingers with the wax of their ripeness
And light as he picks them they seem,
And hollow they sound as they fall together
In streams red and green from the branches unladen.
Pricks up her ears, the old mare, as she hears
One on another, the boxes are filled
By youths so noisome and nimble,
With the riches of the earth so silent and still.
Soon she returns through the gate ever open
More slowly than ever;
Short is the track to the shed
Where the packers are waiting.
The Farmer himself th’ unloading begins,
And tenderly turns the first box on the bench -
The last that he lifts; for the rest of the picking
He spends in appraising the fall.
He culls out a leaf and a branch,
And grasps a delight here and there,
And gauges the size with his fingers;
The packers still talking, though keen to begin.
The cart-load is all overturned;
And into the green-flecked crimson hill on the bench
In inroads too swift for sight,
The packers’ fingers go.
Each globe enwrapped, and according to size
Instinctively known, stuck in design accordingly varied,
Layer by layer, boxes new made
For the market are filled.
Laughingly vie with each other the packers
To fill the first case:
And grudgingly, victory goes to him
Whom they know, best at the envied slyness of hand.
The shed has a corner
Where two lift twin hammers all day:
Nailing the walls of the cases together -
Not too fast for the crops rich incoming!
THE CATS - FROM CAFÉ CHARACTERS
Bill Belson.
Seeing us here
Snapping at our chopped-up meat,
Poking it into our narrow mouths -
Seeing us here with cheap finery
And hungry darting eyes -
You will understand
That we were not born into good fortune -
That we didn’t fall on our feet -
And must make the most of what we have.
ELEGY FOR A DEAD RHINO
Roger F. Brown
It seems to me prepos
terous that such a wise rhino
serous should have succumbed to phos
phorous put there to poison mice!
POEM
Gunnar Iscoocson
When you are sad and restless,
waiting in your bed
for sleep to come,
and feeling it coming,
quiet
and soft like petal of a rose,
to give a lonely soul release,
then dries again that jaded cheek,
so wet of tears,
and tired eyes
are closed - for sleep.
TRAIN HOME
Roger F. Brown
The map is cunning, helped by clock’s deceit,
to say I’ve seen its hundred miles of spindly gums
flash by in these short hours;
brazen conspiracy to weld the lonely hills
to prim suburban streets, a patent sham
that takes no count of long hours
spent in drowsy summer’s heat, held
by slow, sure rhythm of its cloudless days;
which with first false dawn of city lights
will bind me to the old routine
of patterned days and flaunted petty urgencies;
will bring remembered clatter, wild flung
buffets from the stiff sea breeze,
and, with your kisses, bring me home again.
SPRING
Winsome Latter
The air is filled with tiny scents of Spring
And light is swinging down the clear blue sky,
And beauty glistens on the slanting wing
Of a dragon-fly.
The pool reflects the foam of Wattle-gold,
The swift Rosella’s flash of crimson sheen,
And all the earth is warm; and love is told
Where the heart and grass are green.
STORMY BAY
Norris Devir
All-ruffle sea, temper-tossed, trapped
By savage winds in a bay, and following waves like hounds;
No order here, all is wild and willful as though control had snapped;
The angry prisoner water gnashes at the cliff impounds;
Seething bubbles burst in stippling brown and black,
Brief freckles on the foam of green-deep folds;
Driven ashore, the waves come bouncing back,
Ragged lines uneven, that only the wind controls.
THE FLOATING EAGLE
Norris Devir
The eagle floats and slopes adown the air,
Motionless motion, effortless gliding there,
Extended eagle-tips, fanned like a hand.
The gliding quivers and dips, black wings wide-spanned,
Slow screw-threading down, circles descending.
A scragged wilderness above the trees, he walks
On careless wings to the haven of floating hawks,
Sloping up on strong bird-buoyancy, lifting
The body up, spread-tai; rudder guiding the lazy shifting -
Gliding endlessly from dawn to the day’s dull ending.
A POEM
Winsome Latter
We two, lovers of words,
and their capacity to etch in sound,
the spirit’s understanding ……
This night should be our own, expectant
with poem on poem to tell our love;
and yet, our speech seems fettered at its source.
Turbulent void of restless longing
this, groping for expression
to articulate our love:
sentences half formed
trailing into gestures,
powerlessly.
Is the tongue less servant than the heart
than the discerning mind
that frames reality in song?
Or have we
from our obliging lips
(entreating confidence from living flesh)
found a new identity with poetry?