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THE PAULINE GROUP A Literary Society SYDNEY UNIVERSITY, 1949 – 1955 Edited by Julian Woods

Page 4

by Julian Woods


  Part bird and only half ship.

  The mast leans forward in strength,

  The sails stretch out to full length,

  The canvas billows strong

  Lifting the vessel along.

  Sea in the air, on the lips.

  Sea, and the time ruffled sands -

  Why need he think out there,

  Leaning, the wind in his hair?

  His heritage comes with the tide,

  Cool water, his house, his fair bride.

  THE CAMILLIA TREE

  Pacita Moore

  The old stone cottage blinked in the spotlight

  Of gold from the sun.

  Its walls stood square, but he grey shingle roof

  Dipped and curtsied around the chimney

  And the doorways gaped onto tenantless rooms.

  But the camellia trees,

  The two dead camellia trees

  Clawed the air with skeleton branches

  As I passed by.

  KOREAN DAWN

  David A. Haig

  Low in the west

  Venus smiles on the field of Mars.

  As the pale light of the glittering east

  Shines on a twisted bloated corpse,

  Pregnant with stench and putrid slime.

  A sentry peers across the upchurned fields,

  A lone flower stirs its closed bloom,

  A puff of smoke, then shrapnel rains.

  As the sun lifts his golden head

  And parallel beams of parted light

  Stab the cold blue hopeless dawn,

  A rifle cracks

  Sharp in the stillness of a dying night,

  Punctured guts his the gaseous muck of death.

  The sentry turns to the lonely flower,

  Thrills to the solo song of a distant bird.

  But peace has gone with the fading stars

  Leaving hate in his place once more.

  LINES

  J.A. Miles

  In the clouds an intermission

  Then King Moon’s sneering face.

  “Who gave you permission

  To stroll about the place?”

  The fawning stars began to chime

  “My liege we’ll have his head.

  At one a.m. we know its time

  The kingdom was in bed.”

  CUPBOARD LOVE

  Roger Challis Brown

  They showed us the house - “We’re not sure”,

  they said, “we like it, but the garden’s fair.

  We don’t want any heavy digging. Fibro. City water.

  A place to camp, you know. We may move later.”

  Rooms unexpected, floors whose levels

  found a step to reconcile their evils,

  paneled walls, with rosebuds. Curious shape,

  but not unpleasant. Set well up the slope.

  “The man we bought from built it, working

  at weekends,” they said. “Bit lacking

  in conveniences, no copper. Upwards

  of two hundred, it’ll need. Plenty of cupboards.”

  Cupboards! A hoarding termites nest of them,

  doors set in unexpected corners, every whim

  recessed on hinges, scorning any disposition

  save the lust for acquisition.

  “They might be handy, just to keep

  small odds and ends,” they said; “We’ll sleep

  out here of course.” Now, when we visit there,

  the odds are even ends are everywhere.

  AT ERA

  Robin R. Pratt

  --- by courtesy of The Bulletin

  At Era when the sun goes down

  darkness comes sliding down from the hill,

  slipping down the cracks where the creek slips

  to the sea.

  Then the grazing grass grows a stranger green

  as darkness, which on the hillside had stumbled,

  twig-crackling, slips quietly now

  seeping like water through the grass

  and round by the sandhills

  to the sea.

  There are crows at Era and their cawing

  over the huddled hillside bushes

  suddenly hurts the ear.

  And darkness hides in the mangrove swamp,

  imprisoned by the winding pathways there.

  Now draw the tentflaps tight, prepare for sleep,

  thinking of silence. Now you hear

  the wind’s hush in the palm trees

  and the crows cry and the waves’ thud falling,

  now you dream

  strange dreams, and wake bewildered when the dawn is near.

  STREET SCENE

  Manfred MacKenzie

  There is Euridice in the green rain

  Beneath the lamp, shattering

  Into chips, while the pain

  Of the drenched air is humped

  In its coat: the light guttering,

  Crystallized and jumped.

  There Euridici, the rain in your hair

  Glistening shrilly do you hear

  Orpheus in the café, paying his fare,

  Two pennies with his violin

  To Charon: cracking do you hear

  That sound tired and thin,

  Stretched out tight in the grimy light

  While the rain threads ravel out.

  This light has nerves tonight

  Its breath steams: steams in vain.

  What are we waiting for? Do we wait

  For this street to put on its green again.

  From Aircraft Journey

  In the small distance are the words,

  The words and the speech and hands and eyes,

  And each of us alone communes

  Precisely with himself and not

  With any other: then, over the sea,

  Divides in to movement of light on dark,

  Putting his awkward elbow comes the sun,

  And, oh, aerially move the faces forward

  As with the ruin of beveled aluminium

  And seeking with the rhythm of valises,

  We dispel the bright, split air.

  The Pauline Group, 25 June 1953

  BRIDGE MOOD

  Susan Vacchini

  Now we all break the brand around the day

  and move through a frayed edge of light.

  We have past the hard definition of noon

  when the hour is solid,

  the minute precise,

  We have not yet reached the certainty of darkness

  when hot neons bark at us silently

  and junction lights are bowls of blue ice

  melting into the night.

  We are transient now, as greyness,

  and like many birds , we crumble

  into the grey light.

  POEM

  Keith Free

  Thou red and crimson apparition,

  The fabric of my long perdition,

  Thou art caged within my heart

  Whence thou pluckest my soul apart;

  The mathematics of your limbs I find,

  Teach me science of far different kind

  To that which I formerly had wrought

  The mesh and body of my thought:

  For thou art a sense and seem to me

  The expression of a symmetry

  Not learnt in this your world or mine

  But chequered forth in remoter time,

  While this grace that woos thy form

  In a sorcerer’s web my mind deforms;

  And thy voice and the lips red-rimmed

  Are the vehicle of modern sin,

  For a soul it doth speed away

  To a paradise of sub-earthern shades,

  Whence a saint could but confess

  The divinity of its wantonness.

  O love, thy eyes deeper myst’ries have

  Than demon’s spell at a weird black-mass;

  And when this body that your love bears

  Is resolved into it
s elements;

  All its breath and blood are spent;

  And texture fretted to the air,

  Then will those atoms of flesh, now dust,

  For all eternity chorus my lust.

  ALONE ON THE HEADLAND

  Judy Forsyth

  Twin pools of light,

  Sunlight, on the sea.

  Ripples crested with light,

  Sunlight on the sea.

  Two golden pebbles, flung

  From the nearby shore,

  Where the land rounds a tongue

  To lick a tender sore.

  Where the yellow rocks hump

  From the yellow sand,

  Where the leathered trees slump,

  Crushed between sky and land.

  Here the sea crawls with the tide,

  Enfolding with hungry arms,

  Pushing the rooks aside,

  To embrace in the sandy calms.

  Here are more stones to cast

  From the shore, to the sea, in the sun.

  Stones with the strength to hold fast

  The thought that has just begun.

  For where there was only intention

  Now is perspective contemplation.

  Now vibrant glows the sunshine.

  Now static lies the shore.

  Now encroaches the blue of the sea.

  “THE ARGUMENT WAS SIMPLE”

  Roger Challis Brown

  The argument was simple, only

  the calculations were in doubt, the picked bones

  tossed to experts caged in wires to quiet

  their logarithmic snarls; but finally

  their problem would appear plain to plain men

  who disliked something attempted spawning

  these glum forecasts of confusion.

  Movement, striving, chance seized And won;

  these were things all could reckon by

  without this waiting, paused on the edge

  of anger, for a sigh which none would dare

  to query and all might obey …

  Tell me, who had foretold the answer,

  seen the approaching end, the silence?

  ANNUNCIATION

  Judith Rayner

  The peach trees wait,

  Flinging their grey branches,

  Webbing the lusty earth;

  The twigs tremble in love,

  In the naked wood.

  They stand in pain, and ache

  For the blossom to burn

  The coldness, break the blueness,

  Shatter it like a mirror -

  For peace comes with birth.

  And the girl by the gate

  Held in her parenthood,

  Dark-haired, Madonna faced,

  Her fingers touched; interlaced,

  Like the branches on the trees,

  Waits – her eyes lifted to the promise,

  The blue promise of the hills -

  As if her angel will come

  With blossom, and turn

  Her heart from memories

  Of endless furrows and centuries of soil.

  DIDO FOR AENEAS

  Manfred MacKenzie

  Now my leaf burns as deep glass,

  In its late pyre, now, now. I am only

  Smoulder, my anger spoken through you.

  But the dark wind hurts my mind, blows

  Me the children leaves from us, we ringed

  In the light. And our house of summer

  Was shimmered blade of tree, risen

  Palace-leaved while our spring roots

  Were flared strongly in the first ground.

  Why, how our house it was, the sheaved

  Granaries and white woodbird’s dabble

  At pebble grounds around our feet.

  But my house was on ramped beach,

  By your ever-sea, and I think, mined

  Gently down with time motion, you hard

  Away-wind.

  A morning, ah, an early sea

  Your ships move pink-gilled into dawn.

  From my towered and sea wide eyes

  I had seen you; their report, dull news.

  Now I cannot think you ever loved me,

  My eyes nor hands, you had not feasted

  For any small thing.

  THE BIRDS OF GOD

  From Euripides’ Hippolytus

  Translated by Colin Black

  Would that from this earth I might depart,

  And hide me in the cavers of the night;

  That God might place me in his winged flocks

  To dwell e’ermore. Then should I turn my flight

  To the salt wave of the Adriatic strand,

  And the waters of Eridanus: there the tears

  Of Phaeton’s sisters weeping on the shore

  Fall amber drops on the purple deep.

  I would fly to the green isles of the Hesperides,

  The gardens that in the sunset dwell,

  Where Atlas bears the weight of heaven’s glory,

  Where the sea-lord will let sailors no more.

  Here lies concealed the holy graves of Zeus,

  The haunts of the Immortals, whence flow springs

  Ambrosial; and Earth who gives all life

  Increases too the happiness of gods.

  A DISILLUSIONMENT

  David A. Haig

  “Was this love?” I cried!

  When autumn leaves fell on your lovely hair.

  Flush with the joy of a fading day

  Side by side in selfless joy we lay;

  Your sadness and your joy I promised then to share

  After youth’s mad zestful riot should subside.

  Life before us stood revealed

  The sky, split by a searchlight’s beam.

  My hand about your gentle shoulder went;

  A shout! our vows of love the heaving heavens rent:

  “Come trouble, strife, sorrow in never ending stream;

  Our love shall never yield.”

  And then all faded to redeem

  The shabby walls and lonely hours

  When loveless lifeless souls decay

  Till ghostlike they plod their weary empty way

  And reflect of love’s o’erriding powers

  Even in a fleeting dream.

  WALKING

  Keith Free

  These July gymnasium days blow

  So hot, cold, off, on, I sweat, freeze

  In shivering morning rainbows

  Of silky light, gold sheen, walking near

  Hoses spraying on college lawns,

  Damp stalks ruddy in the warmth.

  This currency, coined with eyes, nostrils, mouth

  A riches debasing the famous Khans’

  Won for nothing from an autumn park.

  Yet to most, led up cement paths,

  The brown buildings stand citadel, sandstone

  Quadrate abstracts in an azure dome,

  Kingdom come cased in a dream of brass.

  DAWN MOMENTS

  David A. Haig

  Footsteps echoing in the empty streets,

  The solitary roar of one passing car,

  The gentle throb of a heart that placid beats

  While new light and dawn wind drift far

  Over the brick hills and stucco vales

  Now hidden in the black anonymity of night.

  Venus, wraith like in her beauty, pales

  And black hills are purpling in the cloud strewn light.

  Look now to the south.

  There the bridge in bold relief outlined

  Stirs songs in the poets mouth

  And plucks the deep recesses of his mind.

  There the harbour, frozen by infant light

  Conceives reflections of the golden bluing light

  Outlines lose their starkness, new day bright,

  Plunders a treasure that no wealth can buy.

  First feet flutter on the pavements broad!

  The sleeping city stirs. Proud ech
oes lose their force.

  First trams rolling out a harsh discord!

  The crowds are waking: ignorant without remorse

  For the beauty bought and broken whilst

  A sweaty sickly pallor is settling on the street,

  Furnished are the walls which peace and night have swept.

  The air is poignant with frustration and defeat.

  IN MEMORIAM (to the Golden Cabbage)

  Richard Appleton

  I’ll tell you,

  She was as willing as me,

  As warm as the sand

  And as soft as the sea,

  But things just happened differently.

  I’ll tell you,

  Only the people we knew

  Prevented the two of us

  Seeing it through …

  I doubt if Odysseus

  Would keep face with ease

  If he knew distracting bastards like these:

  One was pink

  Like a beer blotched cupid

  And said nothing true

  Nor yet appeared stupid,

  But teetered word pictures

  On the ears of the mob;

  He made discrediting motives his job.

  And others had Talent, were mystic, were fey,

  They spoke of their souls

  While they probed for a lay,

  But we all were so frightened

  By Sigmund Freud’s warning

  That we never identified bedmates till morning,

  And then those who coupled

  Would pledge to be true ----

  At least till the next night’s

  Drinking was through ----

  And she and I

  Well it can’t really matter,

  But we got confused

  By the wine tinged chatter

  And woke, re-mated, contentedly,

  Surprised at our new partner’s adequacy …

  But I’ll tell you,

  She was as willing as me.

  GARGANTUA’S BIRTHDAY

  Julian Woods

  Gargantua and Pantagruel were feasting just at dawn,

  Ten leagues from Paris on the castle lawn,

  They had enormous meats, oxen, gravies, spice,

  Heaped casks of beer and French wines cooled in ice.

  “My son,’ said great Gargantua, “listen and take note,

  This belly stuff is parching and it clogs the throat,

  Swill, my boy, swill, and listen to me awhile -----

  It is just fifty years to this memorable day,

  Since my mother bore me in an immemorial way,

  Her overfeasting led to it and I came out

  With an afterbirth of earwax and a-crying for some stout.”

  “Father, here take this sucking pig and this ripe bowl,

  And from me accept what admiration can control,

  Take these words of praise, of little or no deceit.”

  So saying Pantagruel rose from his seat.

  “O son,” the good Gargantua immediately replied,

  Here take this bottle and let that speech subside,

  I cherish your sentiments but let’s consider done

  These ceremonious ways between the father and the son.”

  Pantagruel and Gargantua sat all day and feasted on the lawn,

  The five oxen eaten but the wine went flowing on,

  They talked tales of long ago and high philosophy;

  And their expansive wit was all the best of ribaldry,

  And the villages all crept as if in fear of prophets and divines

  As their belching roared like thunder in the pines.

  MATINS

  Keith Free

  A vision of Crow’s Nest through a blue window

  Tepid water on my chest; the early light

  Slops yellow puddles on the soapy tiles.

  Spiralling down from St. Leonard’s Park

  Mixed with the bells of surrounding steeples

  Repeating their texts to all Sunday people

  Three starlings perch on the backyard fence;

  Below my cat gives them a considered glance.

  Over the sill a cold breeze slides

  A hand of grey marble along my hide

  The pinky scent of soap informs me that

  I now smell Christian: the cat

  Ignores the starlings’ chattering now

  In the sooty hazel; lithe clouds blow

  Across the pale blue; from below

  Fumes of bacon and black coffee grow.

  LYRICAL REQUIEM

  Marie Kuttna

  Silence brings on regrets: it revives

  the odd short-circuits of the twisting mind,

  its expensive right to screen old memories,

  to replay melodies from the singing past;

  though each note is a song of loneliness

  flicking at the shadow to keep its terrors off,

  or a love-song - flesh vibrant, forlorn call

  awaiting its echo from a distant wall.

  The turning wheels and backward-turning reels

  torment consciousness until the curtains fall

  in silence, over all …

  UNEASINESS

  Manfred Mackenzie

  Three things that will dispel

  The heart from easy vagary -

  A narrow line in air

  Where not of aircraft was -

  On the laming breakage

  From an old storm’s dark arteries,

  Sight of glance aside a girl

  Will hide behind her eye -

  O, glories where gods grind us

  Which heart denies, till it laugh thrice.

  WELTSCHMERZ

  Marie Kuttna

  To-day seems to have died on our hands -

  an uncared for patient, whose early loss

  hurts with sheer failure more than all past defeats.

  The past - oh, apply that local anaesthetic!

  benumbed, to merge with it the history of some world.

  Worlds are collapsible gadgets for men who remember,

  who play with growing spirals when conviction is gone;

  when only our despair echoes through time:

  don’t go September! stay with us Spring!

  Living is everything.

  and by now the present lies dead on our hands.

  The Pauline Group, 27 July 1953

  EVER AND AGAIN I SEE

  Robin Pratt

  Ever and again I see

  The clock’s face like a lettered moon,

  The tired wheel of the traffic slowly turning.

  The fountain falling through the rain

  Languishes on polished stone.

  Long, cold, divided in the air,

  The parting moment is apart,

  Falls suddenly:

  The sum of all these brief goodbyes

  Is no small tragedy.

  FOR A PHILOSOPHER

  Judith Rayner

  I have put out antennae from my mind

  And my flickers of delicate feeling

  Have glided over your brain, touched and twined

  About your heart; but my heart was a dreaming

  Morning citadel, and my flights of doves

  Were lost in the blossom-storm of your thought,

  Beating their wings against your learning, loves

  Too ancient for their gentleness. They sought

  The sunshine; feathers striking colour there

  And stirring the steel-crested clouds around,

  Circling the black and fainting waters where

  The grey dove-like Ophelia thoughts lie drowned

  In years; but I do not understand how deep

  The waters flow across the thought they keep.

  DANAE

  Judith Rayner

  When I was young I walked in auburn fire,

  Flinging a plume of sparks across the light.

  Now they have bound my flame within the tower

 
Of brass, to hide me from the long dark night

  Of love. My longing eyes reflect strange thoughts -

  Lost purple irises by hidden streams,

  There the fawning sunlight slipped and caught

  Its dappled greenness where the water gleams.

  But they cannot hide me from my lover,

  (My precious body, flamed of white and gold)

  His fruit-of-Autumn blood will soon discover

  My turret flares; and mimic suns enfold

  Me in embrace of gold; then let my flame,

  My auburn light, curl round the sky again.

  I WALKED A-COMPANY WITH CLEAR MORNING

  Keith Free

  I walked a-company with clear morning

  My way high-flung as any kite

  And I came in gay serfdom.

  Thick channels, alive with intol’rable heat

  Loaded me my storm’s deep centre.

  You were honey in my blood.

  Now, this dry thistle, hard sown in my chest

  Tells me the locust hour is raw.

  And these dull eyes have rusted.

  Now socketless winds, gull-hunted, stony

  With cold, saw across my fallow

  And this fear-fermenting heart.

  SONNET, ON LOVE AS USUAL

  Marie Kuttna

  Ye Gods! I remember how I asked for love,

  Expostulated for it, demanded its delights,

  Filed an application in every Heavenly Office

  Begging for it, or insisting on my rights …

  Yes, I remember how I desired love;

  Its intoxication, all its thorns and flowers -

  I wished for the heart-ache as well as happiness

  To fill my life, or while away long hours …

  At last their patience lost, the Administration

  Marked my case deserving, and sent me you,

  This is how I learnt the lesson about love,

  Though at first I was too dazed to know I knew:

  And now I can accept with equanimity

  The old definition: Just Insanity.

  YOU AND I

  Marie Kuttna

  The air suggests spring … I can feel its softness

  drawn intensely by my fingertips

  while sounds float in waves over the park

  and like trustworthy, faithful old comrades

  shine the streetlights.

  The breeze brings the scent

  of spring - spring invading distant, silent trees;

  an empty tramcar has just rattled by

  from your direction, and I realize

  how much I hoped you would be coming.

  You could ring up. And … the evening is so soft,

  scented with warmth and starlight; and the noise

  of traffic and business rumbles far away.

  The streetlights have changed now into magic signals

  throwing their shimmer on dark shiny leaves, and I wonder,

  whether it was really more lonely in the past

  before I met you, and learned the meaning of spring moods

  than I am now, waiting for you, perhaps in vain.

  MY SISTER KATE

  Jeff Miles

  Helen was another star who, during the course

  of an epic, played to the crowd for a secret siege;

  but the boys in the neighbourhood recognized superfluity

  in the erotic subtlety of a wooden horse.

  Aestheticians all, they find less perfection of form

  in a skull staining a silver plate - rather

  her emphatic curve of jellied truth, her well-rounded hips;

  they lack the consistency of introvert, the Baptist John.

  No disciplined thousand crews will she shipwreck, nor

  condone the violence of heroic abnegation, for

  if harmony is beauty, she is exuberance;

  and in the ecstasy of function, we become

  the synthesis of king, saint and whore – a universal One

  in the unique and seductive nirvana of her shimmying.

  THE ROCK

  Judy Forsyth

  A rock, lonely on a shore’s ruin,

  Waits for the return of the sea.

  Waits for the swelling tide to overrun

  Into the lee.

  Once the waters heared about here.

  Long waves of shade, breaking in white

  Foam on a lichened rock, salty and clear

  In the sunlight.

  And when the waters rose in storm,

  The gulls, driven from a windscoured sky

  Came here for refuge, the one stable hour

  On which to rely.

  But now the sand embeds the rock

  On the beach, wind-silted it lies,

  Cast-up, while the birds wheel in flight to mock

  With raucous cries.

  The earth draws the rock to its heart,

  And crumbles hard stone to soft sand.

  Identity, strength lost, it becomes a part

  Of the dry land.

  CRIME WITHOUT CRIME

  David Haig

  Forbidden fruit, contemptuous food

  This satisfaction of natural desire,

  “Filthy disgusting and rude.”

  Sensitive body caught in a mire,

  Believing its substitute indecent,

  Seeking again its release,

  Shame after satiation recent

  Hoping for life to cease.

  Cooped up, stored up life,

  Desire straining again to see,

  Yearning, sharp as a knife,

  (Oh God! Forgive me!)

  Week in and week out,

  Bursting forth at last sublime,

  Happy, exhilarated, liking to shout,

  And the student told - it is slime.

  Reasoning plunged into melancholy,

  Impulsive, seeming, useless intrigue

  A face worried no longer jolly,

  A body keyed, seeking fatigue,

  A standard demanding curbing. Futility!

  The conscience wrongly victorious,

  A soul lacking utility,

  A fear racked mind, inglorious.

  Spinsterhood, symbol of denial,

  Limiting man’s power to appreciate bliss,

  Life wasted and useless, sterile,

  Hard unsympathetic, emotion amiss,

  Denying even inconsequential escape

  Freedom and life the great outrage!

  Perverting till man (self disgusted ape)

  And ostracism turns life’s miserable page.

  Oh! Let the youth make this appeal:

  This sin is not for God to Forgive

  But is merely for society to repeal.

  The sanctity of womanhood will live,

  Youth undenied of hope, now calm

  And free of ruinous mental strife,

  Using this mental cleansing balm

  Again shall have life.

  EVENING SONNET

  David Haig

  I thank the Lord for today;

  For sunshine on warm walls;

  For haze dulled mountains bathed in light;

  The red clouds of evening;

  The lone cow, who forlornly calls,

  Summoning her child to bay;

  For the love that knows no night

  But prompts my willing heart to sing.

  I ask for her eternal love;

  To be her tower of strength

  Saved from the passing time;

  The power to lift our lives above

  The season’s awesome length;

  Love, divine, untouched by hollow rhyme

  The Pauline Group, 21 September 1953

  A VISION

  Colin Black

  In the moonlight I walked through grey meadows, the night was cold and my heart was dark. And when I came to a willow that lay on a little hill up from the river, I sat myself down upon a rock.

  The moon’s bea
ms were soft but cold; the green was turned to grey, the river murmured alien from my ears, for life and the trees were still, but my heart was dark.

  I thought not for the moonlight was no place for thought. I sat on the cold hard rock and its immutable chill became part of my being. Memories and sorrows, fair visions, forgotten loveliness approached my consciousness and murmured without. Soft winds stirred the sighing trees, the tiny spirits of the meadow rippled from the willow and the stone. A quivering hush was in the air as if something unknown was near. Unknown to all but me; for I knew who stood behind me, though I made no sound and did not turn my head.

  The winds grew calm and stillness reigned more deep than before, and the night was afraid for we stood in the presence of the lady of all things dark. A cloud veiled the face of the moon; there appeared before me the Queen of the Night.

  Tall and majestic, darkveiled in robes of black, she said no word, but came to me and her long soft-flowing robes brushed my face; she embraced my neck and held me, and her dark robes enfolded all my soul in touch of silk, and bonds of iron. She clutched my bosom and her long fingers entered my body and fastened about my heart; cold and dread, she touched my lips with a passionless kiss of death and despair.

  “Soul of my sorrow, vision of my song of love and death, what will’st thou?”

  She rose and held me with one cold hand, veiled in the other sleeve her far off countenance, ever to me blind. With voice of other worlds, of other time, of past existence never told she spoke:

  “All things am I unto you; all past desires, all hopes, all memories. I signify the half-forgotten past, and I shall never leave you. Never for the memory of things past abides; these shades shall never vanish, for all your hopes and prayer. I am the soul incarnate of your living being, but I am beyond you. Look and see me what I am.”

  She drew close to me, and the veil was lifted from her face. I saw despair and envy, twisted illusions cold and hard; I saw the unhappy child and the rejected youth; old friends I saw and as I looked they laughed in hollow exultation, and I was deceived for they were serpents, Eastern horrors, demons and fantasies of fantastic night; all fears and sorrows then I saw, and visions of the things I held most dear, twisted and broken; the forgotten gown of intellect, the desperate muse of poetry and beauty, both turned from me in scorn, and laughed; nothing remained but cruelty and evil, disillusionment and misery and loneliness; I looked and saw the face of Ann smiling in mockery . . . .

  The vision faded and I was alone; and the willow sighed and the night was cold, and my heart is still dark, for the light will never come.

  VINCENT VAN GOGH

  Manfred Mackenzie

  His mind had dreamed with menace

  Or lain swilled in brown resenting season;

  A rain ran above the making tide

  Left heat-smoking the cinder searock.

  Confused, his vision rumoured

  Outward. The second day he met

  At noon envisaged in an orchard

  A girl whose body strung without relief.

  ‘The green hedge violence, spring squirrel

  Vines, red earth that shouts a busy fire,

  This country holds seared corn that flaps

  Like sunflowers, fertile tinder evenings,

  A country bridged by vicinal summer

  Cyprus-pillared into autumn year.’

  These other days he sought with gold-bird wings

  The zero holyland of Byzantine,

  But too near fell embalmed in enameled sea.

  THE YELLOW ROBBERS

  Manfred Mackenzie

  There being several hills they chose

  This olive-grassed, under the low day sweat

  Of sun burnished through yellow tragique mask.

  O my enemies this unwell hot wind kisses me

  Like the Judas, waylain here I could never

  Slay it, too visible for accustomed secret foray.

  But I would face this slate wind

  No eyes’ wind, nor helmet anger, remember

  Words, their fixed bitter stubble, bound brain.

  Farm and ember. Heavy on the ridge we beat,

  Divide like pines. This laboured stake starts hoarse

  From furrow, creaking bursts ears, the torqued spirit

  Now wait, wait for the rich man at the crossroads.

  These nails too have turned wise their eyes

  Upon my bones, the other’s grief alloyed with silver

  Well, they launched us the soldiery’s

  Complacent spear, asses eating nonchalant

  Palms, horses lack cries, the dry ruptured cry.

  Then up-wind, the urgent words. Drum. What?

  O words of high thunder and words of rain.

  Their sodden storm of years flashes electric

  Deadly down boreal. Do not let them live,

  Not till the ceremonial furious Venetian.

  [POEM]

  Judy Forsyth

  Where are your dreams now?

  Lost in the sob of yesterday,

  Or caught in the twisted strands of future?

  Where are your wide eyes

  And hands trembling for zeal?

  Your thoughts, bright new coins fresh from the mint?

  Has your willingness been crushed,

  Stuffed back? Or like an eager child

  Been shaken into tears with thoughtless reprimand?

  Has disillusionment cupped its hands,

  And held you like a struggling bee,

  Your buzz becoming an unheeded drone?

  Has your wide world been narrowed,

  Confined in the space of oncoming years?

  Professing their knowledge over your youth!

  They rule their son’s country.

  Over the meal they discuss war,

  While war itself gluts on the limbs of youth.

  Must we all grow old and wise as this?

  I would rather die so young, still dreaming.

  Than live to ponder with a head full of grey age.

  Give me a brush and I will paint it in the sky,

  Daub it in neons thru the cities glare,

  Use the newstands as easels for my canvasses,

  And watch while the indifferent critics stare.

  Give me a pen and I will write it on the water,

  Indelible it in ripples of the sea,

  Make the waves the turning pages of my book,

  And watch while the unheeding ships ignore my plea.

  Give me a tune and I will sing it thru the air,

  Whistle it along the night-shadowed streets,

  Croon it as love song where the lovers walk,

  And listen to the echo of unheeding feet.

  I will write them, I will tell them, I will sing them

  That their world is dead.

  They will not read, they will not hear, they will not comprehend

  What I have said.

  They will only stand and stare, misers all.

  Each man shrugging his shoulders at the wind’s sigh.

  Each man living within the reach of his own hand.

  Each man pulling down the shade to hide the sky.

  The apathy, the awful apathy of staring men.

  And I? I will go and break my presumptuous pen.

  OCCASIONED BY ITEM: CLERGYMEN JUDGING A BEAUTY CONTEST

  Keith Free

  Adam everyman and lubra eve

  Grubbed their brown gods from the soil; felt the

  Barbarous earth, and were content only

  In the propitious season to conceive.

  Mr. Suburban with modern techniques

  Drilled deep for sex; tried the elusive key

  From door to door; frantic at length must he

  Crawl desert paths to kiss their horny feet.

  Now Miss Universe, random-choice fella

  Sun-bathes beneath a striped beach umbrella;

  New mother earth, and his slick mother Olympian

  Smiles hugely for
the cameraman.

  But dry the eyes. Look! Look! for here we see

  New miracles, cheeses-cake orthodoxy.

  AUGUST

  Endre Ady

  translated by Marie Kuttna

  Autumn had called on Paris yesterday.

  She was gliding along the Rue St. Michel.

  waving to leaves and branches on her way

  as she met me.

  I was on my slow way to the Seine.

  Songs, like winter fires were smokily burning

  in my mind - little songs about pain,

  death, and yearning.

  Autumn passed me, and whispered in my ear.

  The Rue St. Michel trembled to the sound: -

  a few playful leaves, flitting from the branches

  danced on the ground.

  A second only while Summer hardly halted

  and laughingly silently Autumn left Paris.

  And I alone had known that she was here

  under the trees.

  FROM A HAUNTED HOUSE

  Judith Rayner

  In the lissome rain of the twilight

  I have seen boats bear down from light

  sad bays to the night,

  and in the morning their sound has opened out

  in dreams and under closed eyelids.

  Morning has always come thus with

  translucence slipping through atmosphere;

  the moon, dead and blue-veined with memories

  of mountains, hanged in taut light in bare

  trees. Fears have grown brittle then as fires

  closed in the narrow clasp of sunlight.

  This safety is only half-down-smoky fading

  of clouds, feathered fullnesses of gulls’ breasts

  and the water growing pink, flushing

  with webbed feet in the depths; then night

  returns, through the black hours

  rhythmic as scratched design. Our fear

  is remembered mist and flickered shadow,

  lumped skulls and empty skulls outside the fires

  and ghosts are acrid legacies from primitive

  minds, gliding surprised in thoughts and sensitive rooms.

  TO A CZECHOSLOVAKIAN JEWISH MIGRANT WHO WAS IN A CONCENTRATION CAMP DURING WORLD WAR II

  Sue Vacchini

  Perfectly your heart’s strength is that tower

  brilliant contre la poussiere du monde.

  Puissant.

  Frail, frail were your bodies beneath war’s brutality

  But your minds and hearts were strong

  Lighting one to the other a clean power

  Above war’s brutality.

  And now, towering is your heart

  more bright

  holding hearts and minds

  that men gave you,

  their bodies, then, too frail for life.

  You keep within you

  A rabbi’s last warning blessing

  A philosopher’s last thought

  and the reality, that your body

  was less frail.

  And you shall blaze

  Against the world’s dust -

  That we lean to your clean strength

  knowing human to human, all minds and hearts.

  Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

  Sue Vacchini

  The old thin nights

  sing the winds like a plaintive reed

  into my heart,

  Discovering its unquiet purple.

  O sing me back to the dreaming time

  old winds.

  Back to the Dreaming, Dreaming time

  When my heart was clear and still,

  When the air was silent …

  For now the air is tossed, wandering,

  Searching the Quiet that is lost,

  Crying among the lurching trees,

  For the Quiet;

  Making a restive purple of their hearts.

  Once I glimpsed the Dreaming in the sun,

  Silently,

  Silently caught the green moment,

  And then

  My heart knew such a stillness

  That the restive purple

  Faded –

  In the green moment.

  O but the bleak winds come

  Scattering the green-time dreaming

  Whirling me into the night again,

  For that,

  That which the trees and I and the winds

  Can never find.

  The Pauline Group, April 1955

  FEED THEM THAT FALL FROM THE TABLE

  Barrie? Gillman (B.W.F.G.)

  “Twenty one years …

  Yes, twenty one years in a pinewood casket …

  Of my own particular design and selection

  _________________

  “Twenty one times round the year.

  Too little time, yes too little time

  For recognition …

  _________________

  “Soon the mating season …

  Life’s own reason

  For duration

  On this pottled earth …

  _________________

  “Kindly ascribe my success to,

  Licentious living …

  And an overabundance,

  Of would be spite …

  __________________

  “Come and join me, in the sweet balloon of nature,

  And say that I loved this life fro greater reason,

  Than I would suppose …

  __________________

  “Remember you seek life as you expected liberty.”

  __________________

  Moderation and existence,

  Maximation and ultimation,

  Co-existence …”

  __________________

  “Wonders and mysterious ways,

  Solve …

  And with solution …

  Grasp realization …

  ___________________

  “Brotherhood of elements

  Controlled supposition …

  ____________________

  “Speak upwards for the inclination,

  Is steep … And the way is of your life …

  ____________________

  “Trust men as you would deceive your maker”.

  The Pauline Group, 15 June 1955

  [POEM]

  Jerry Nelson

  O we have shattered the gift we found

  And turned to the love of ash. The grave

  Has bound us round. What can be saved

  In the hollow breast of the grave? We’re bound

  In the ash of flesh, and the rose of pain

  Has blinded our hearts more than flame

  Could blind. O bind us Christ in thorns

  Again, when the heat of the heart that breaks

  In the ash, in the night, in the ground, is drawn

  To Him whose heart is fire and sweet,

  Whose heart in the rose of blood is bound.

  Come with the trumpet, Christ with the clash

  Of cymbals, come to the world of ash.

  THE COAST

  John K. McLaughlin

  Frost-white clouds in a sky of blue,

  While waves of green fall on the shore,

  And farther out the breakers roar,

  Where the sea takes on a lighter hue.

  Rose-red cliffs near a golden beach;

  With flecks of fire the sea is lit,

  On the horizon the red sun split,

  As it slowly passes from our reach.

  The sky is dusted with silver stars,

  And above the black and silent shores

  Hangs pale the crescent moon, which pours

  A misty light on sandy bars.

  A SHELTER

  Manfred MacKenzie

  What jumped queasily in my blood

  What thin fire upon the spines of trees

  Signed of multiplicity of cloud

  Come quick upon no ordinary breeze?

  Those mauve lightnings splayed aloud


  So livid quiet another might not hear

  Beneath blood (quiet as bone-white) so high and wide

  So strut, tower, flag or poplar did not bear

  What willed then from that bland air;

  Then rain began on distant capes

  And broke on all of that geography;

  But I have seen as it rolls and leaps.

  Rain fume of warship-bowed its masts ever

  Sealed in that imperilling fire, marauder

  Of my no man issued no man’s weather.

  And I who had been the thunder’s boarder.

  Those contrived of wind and water times

  I count on fingers now, and from this shed

  Of ordinary brick where bodies give me room like rhymes

  I watch afar the wry small lightnings where they led.

  ALL THE GRAPHITIC MESS

  Julian Woods

  All the graphitic mess of men and engines,

  All the rasps of speech like unechoing iron,

  The frictive discords and bellow of combustion

  Are tucked away under Paddington and Glebe.

  And it is quiet with evergreens on the calm lawns,

  Qualmless streetlights, and confident purring taxis,

  Blinking round the avenues, lilting on springs

  And all soft, all hush, the couples come out.

  Under the bawdy moon goat-men still gambol

  And the mystic howls, north of the harbour,

  The ecstasy, the moment of perfect faith

  Over the first ceremonious sherry in the lounge.

  Lifted up, the crushed peasant with his mountain barley

  Hand reaped in the rheumatic wind, the gift

  To the unsuperstitious prayer has been granted;

  Ah, Newton, you have roofed us from disconsolations

  Of the cold vacuums between the tiny stars

  Why have I felt my terror between dead houses

  And the clean swept streets, the fence that doesn’t rock

  With a face over a hedge in a startled silence?

  In the Riverina scrub it isn’t more lonely,

  When it’s so quiet you fear someone is just about to speak

  Stepping out of the leaves, talking in a loud voice

  In the afternoon hours of the omniscient watching fox.

  Where will we hide when the burning bowels of history

  Erupt, and the world flexes its red arms?

  In the bitter periods, or where the raw tranquility?

  Ah, we are gods leaning back out of life and time.

  Yet kept busy by the rip of Progress. My house

  Much of my property are out of date, seven

  Remarkable inventions since Christmas all

  For household application have kept me diligent.

  And all my days are dreams of evenness,

  Love quiet, home comforts, pretty little wife,

  Two children planned cautiously between pay rises

  On anxious midnights of unstoppered fertility.

  Born, and goosefleshed by the stimulant air,

  Re-enwombed and intended for sleep,

  Uneasy hints of a tearing birth but blessed

  Into blindness before they fear the dark.

  MY LOVE MUST FALL TO GRIEF

  Jerry Nelson

  My love must fall to grief. She understands

  The rose shall burn to ash in furnace heat

  And I shall lurch alone in Savage lands

  And curse the sightless power that turned my feet

  Away. Yet I must turn to darker wine

  Than wine-deep eyes and wander stranger streets

  In stranger lands with darker nights than mine,

  And eat a bitter bread of bitter wheat,

  And I must kiss untender cheeks and lips.

  This burning burden bares me slender down

  And grief has wrecked a thousand fragrant ships.

  EPITAPH FOR A WALK

  Mari Kuttna

  All life is useless … only in raw clay

  can questioned meanings remain unresolved.

  The looping pale clouds will perhaps release

  the earthy undulation of today and yesterday;

  The mauve woodsmoke, the evening-scented sky,

  rescue me from my own hearing and sight,

  turn me from the point of my own return:

  from a voice that falls softly from twilight at sea,

  and the unquestioning glance of an eye.

  Not the single notes, but the theme in a fugue

  can drown this sense of endless nonarrivals,

  save me from the slowly-tightening loop

  of a voice that rustles like leaves on dry grass,

  and its undulation through the salt air at night.

  HUMPTY-DUMPTY

  John Croyston

  Humpy-Dumpty sits on a window sill

  the air of eyes droughting round his

  merged head: soldiers lay leaves

  for his Columbus crushed solution

  on the thumbs down Gladitorial ground.

  That the sailors were as soft as the sea

  And the sea tear-wet and warm

  He’d sat, noisily, wrapped in newsprint,

  (some pasted on the pane) saying, “What a good egg am I,”

  and while his hen claimed precedence in the yard

  a wolf damaged a flower, and all the falling leaves

  couldn’t keep Humpty from falling.

  That the laurels were loud in the wind

  And the wind without a storm.

  Winter and the heaven petals bone the boughs

  and hide the house, and silence moves on the house

  the dove-white yard and the laurel tree.

  The cygnet moves, and cracks the stillness

  A dove hears snows are in the sun

  And the Ark is of an acorn.

  MICE

  Julian Woods

  A mouse is a beautiful and intricate creature

  Observing one on the stove in search of food,

  The features seemed so precise and alive,

  That his smallness appeared only concentration,

  And our fear of mice I thought

  Stems from this keen tinyness.

  But not only this. Seeing one on the floor

  It was evident why women panic and call for help.

  Mice do not run directly away from you

  They merely canter across the floor at an odd angle,

  As though escaping in a different medium altogether.

  And that whisper of hurrying feet

  And low carried head, can hardly be called escaping

  For it gives the impression

  That at any moment the mouse will accomplish

  An Einstein space-time curve

  And suddenly confront him on even terms.

  A WOODCUT FOR CEZANNE

  Manfred Mackenzie

  He was of a hardy mind

  Who touched in fruits beneath the rind

  But whose transgression was not to see

  Beyond the fruit of the apple tree.

  I do not think, for instance, that in pears

  He felt that jealous prudent seed that’s theirs.

  Yet we know the apple is more primary

  Though in his kind of conservatory

  I cannot think that the natural sun

  Quibbled much over either one.

  THE BEGGARS

  Judith Rayner

  As beggars before the autumnal town

  With its last strained beauty of taut tall trees,

  Who left their summer’s fields, coming down

  From trembling, spun stallion, mist on muscle

  Hills, finding under seamould plated spires

  Empty streets and sleep bedraggled birds,

  Are those who seek within their restless hours

  To touch another’s mind with patient words.

  Not so friendless the stranger in fin
e cities

  As those who in sole thought may penetrate

  Perceiving alone; and no one pities,

  With the radiance of some welcome state,

  (Neither church nor charitable women,)

  When their loneliness overwhelms them.

  LINES FROM MACEDON

  Marie Kuttna

  If destiny is the strength of our desires

  years abstract the power from the dynamos of fate.

  The art of winning, in art and other matters,

  comes with some practice. I came and saw

  but conquest unrolls no worlds for new possession

  no, I can only turn to sack the towns

  I held before. So I remain

  in control of many a field of skirmish

  but fight decisive battles all alone,

  myself against myself, once again.

  O god of dreams, grant me a new desire!

  the ones I had have fallen by the way.

  LIBRARY

  John Croyston

  In the evening he reads dreams

  hour housed and roof-warmed

  in the long room. He blinked tired years

  from his quiet eyes.

  There is none to fill his fingers

  or his slippers, or tie knots in his life.

  none to spin morning on a cup of tea

  or feel time on the seconds of his pulse.

  There is no time. Living is a timeless

  change of place and oscillation of crowds;

  and dying is the way he lives,

  and the colourless ache of autumn.

  So he comes with fumbling feet

  blackened against the cold,

  his aspen hands floundering on a table

  his head on a book reading dreams.

  THE BARGAIN

  Manfred MacKenzie

  Times after I thought those same words spent

  On early articles I know never bought

  Were words gone. Re-encountering them

  I see that wary fruit that’s something man instead

  Was bought and ask, is there not wondering.

  Which time to thought it would be demanded why

  I did not give to rare trade a name

  Of better grace. If what punished much ago

  Began than its more fatal altered way

  I have praised now that so courteous dawn.

  ON THE BEACH

  Keith Free

  As molluscs, prone on bearded shelves

  From globeringal ooze secrete their pearls,

  So this morning in my mind seems

  To form the lattice of a crystal scene,

  A precarious dazzling tissue that holds

  The sand, the bay, and our outstretched selves

  In diamond that is never old.

  As molluscs gird their blueish valves

  With horny chambers for their tendril souls,

  Our added pleasure, from this means

  That all our pleasures that have been

  Are helmet linings for our tender skulls.

  As marble artifacts sunk in a marsh

  Crust with chalk and lose their chiseled life

  So months will coat this sand and sun, the past

  (Excepting the interior crystallites).

  MY LOVE MUST GRIEVE

  Jerry Nelson

  My love must grieve in distant lands

  For Christ has claimed my heart and hands,

  And wretched I in sorrow leaving

  Have lost my heart in time for grieving,

  And I in hiding cannot hide

  From their blameless bleeding

  Nor from the ceaseless rushing tide

  Of hopeless voices crying

  In their wizened needing.

  Their mouth unfed, the living dying

  O land of fire

  O night of tears

  O day of sighing.

  FREUDIAN IN THE SOUTHERN SUBURBS

  Keith Free

  The sun, through red cirrus and strata of pall

  Sinks into black Botany’s factory rim.

  Of Plato’s Eternal, he was the mighty symbol

  And poets thought its sapience shone thro’ them.

  He acquired a myriad fiery names

  And poets were his phantom instruments

  Till, grappling with the richer idioms

  In their daementia, the word became the sun.

  But in a different garden I have daily wrought

  Scorn those projections of unhealthy sap

  Know that the muse is refleshed thought,

  Infant echoes from the mother’s lap,

  Know that the roses in the brain

  Are rooted in the crippled loins,

  Know that living, like night’s subversive bands

  Infiltrates our mental states

  Now block by block, its crowds expand

  A dark bile through my glands

  As workmen pour from factory gates.

  And in a disease of brownish gold

  The shrivelled sun slips

  Away before invasion

  Then clouds swarm down like negro lips

  The dark! The dark! The dark has won!

  Now left, now right

  Form and figure, one by one

  Unform into the normal night

  I stand still in the darkening street

  My stupor culls me from the world

  The skin of my body is a papery grey

  My brains golden abscess drains quite away

  O my sicklie soul! Looke to me!

  Is this the Vision, the Triumph?

  AT THIS TIME

  Dick Appleton

  III

  Nipples expectant

  And white thighs writhing …

  And after said time

  The birth-puckered crying,

  From these

  (failing tablets)

  The music receding,

  From these,

  Kin to sea-snail,

  Our essence of being.

  Choice of Nirvana, Dioce,

  Or a neither, new, but Human,

  A life that thrives on living,

  (with regrets to Cardinal Newman)

  Sharply

  Like bars silhouetted,

  Smoothly

  On seas over-mastered,

  To stalk the streets

  Outstare the signs,

  Though the axe falls after …

  (the sea-snail shrinks

  from the dark-cut shadow,

  our minds, our essence,

  might flinch so tomorrow)

  Mind lurches,

  Jerks the time-wheel on;

  Time falters

  When its hub is gone.

  ZIG-ZAG

  John Greenstone (sic)

  The zig-zag dreams

  Blaze in various states of disrepair,

  The fierceness of imitators, the corruptible goodwill,

  Time-heaves, owl-echoes, syllables of smoke

  Understandably.

  In the plastic citadels of despair

  Board is free but souls are thallium

  In some attic poetlings brew coffee

  As warrior of something or other, no matter.

  He can be thankful for the little things of life.

  What is the word to use? Now that

  The H-bomb has been invented in bedrooms

  A pink gust of powder.

  What irony! Dance the square dance,

  Quote the sporting advertisement

  Rather then weep over tissue paper

  Yet it seems to us that must die

  And go into the grave that we

  Hugging a pair of friable thighs

  What the old solid edifices teach;

  Drum-gray, tear shaking humiliations.

  LA COMEDIE HUMAINE

  Richard Appleton

  Sauce for Saints and sauce for Sinners

  Spices for Honore’s dinners,

 
Saints shall thrive in ordered bliss,

  Sinners thrive on something ‘less’:

  These will sculpture life to patterns

  And sip ‘X’ beers to every pay,

  Those will bed them down with slatterns

  And guzzle claret when they may;

  These will weep at planned-for sorrows

  And shoulder griefs with tautened lip,

  Those, feel fear for all their morrows,

  Fore-seeing soon the Final Slip;

  These will age with querulous yearning

  Begging smiles for gifts they’ve strewn,

  Those will wake to blear-eyed mornings

  Wake to fear they’ve always known.

  Gall for Saints and gall for Sinners

  Victuals at the Devil’s dinners,

  Saints shall die in beds of pain,

  Sinners sharply die ……Again.

  MY DECEIT

  Terry Driscoll

  Beyond the wharf

  grey rocks, bone smooth

  reject the speckled waters,

  and from the hill

  reflections

  polish their shadows

  on debris

  on the water’s edge.

  The street carries wind

  along the fences,

  fences that line

  an infinity of footpaths

  as they frame a gathering

  of empty trees.

  And from the road beyond,

  Her voice beckons,

  beckons from the street of Sirens

  from the highway

  of my deceit.

  The Pauline Group, no date

  KREMLIN COLD

  John Croyston

  Kremlin cold

  and Pentagon pride

  these are the reasons

  why Henry died.

  He poor chap

  is the helled word

  “Christ”, or the cry

  of Angels to their God;

  he is the blood

  that washed the lamb

  and he is the blood

  that left the lamb;

  he is the sword

  and he is the hand

  and he is the flesh

  and the matted sand

  And Henry is you

  and Henry is I

  and his mouth is sweet

  with his own soft eye.

  THE HARE

  Julian Woods

  We saw a hare travelling across country

  Between houses by the open pasture,

  Gambolling, loping, taking his time,

  In full daylight, ruffled by the winter wind.

  The creature’s vision of things struck us.

  He noted, he avoided, he was careful,

  We were just conditions of his purpose

  As one of the professionals he went nonchalantly by.

  He paused at the metal road for a moment

  Ears straight with energy, back curved like a spring,

  Over the road he went, an important traveller,

  With something surely there at his destination.

  FLIGHT OF THE QUEEN ANTS

  Julian Woods

  Out of the gloomed air

  And the wind’s torrent

  The ants came scattering,

  Whirled in their mad millions.

  They flew and settled,

  And deftly laid their gauze wings down,

  And their bodies twisted away

  Frantic with desire.

  THE SEAGULLS

  Julian Woods

  On the windy straits

  To the steamer’s horn

  The seagulls are skimming

  The flying foam.

  Windy circles

  And three-pronged feet

  Passing the bay

  Where the white waves beat.

  Admirals, sailors,

  Leathery fishermen

  Sink down in the sea

  Where the gulls can’t get them.

  Ignorant tourists

  Throw over crumbs,

  They pick the offerings

  Of all foreign lands.

  The bell, the buoy

  And the lighthouse tower

  Send to the sailors

  Hour upon hour

  The menace of water,

  The drift of the tide,

  Anxiety in storm

  If the shoal is wide.

  While the gulls play wide

  On the ragged seas,

  Windy particles

  Of the Antipodes.

  MEETINGS

  Keith Free

  A few minutes either way was sufficient

  But the hero’s flaw, the gypsy’s curse is coincidence

  Approaching here, book under arm, a man in the street

  Now recognized as an acquaintance; and you meet.

  Confusedly at the intersection I become

  Step out of the moving photograph and doff

  The everyday magic cloak; safe through the world of dwarfs

  Now defined as he thinks I am.

  For he is the poisonous spy, the unrevealed birth mark;

  You are forced to see the fact of aimlessness

  And that, as each fumbles with the immediate past

  That all only know anyone more or less,

  Some feel this more poignantly than I did, ever,

  Talk on anything; produce the detaining cigarette

  Till suddenly the definition is a stranger ……

  Especially at night, when the city only has a railway voice,

  And a sole survivor, you follow the tram lines home;

  From the tunnel of your introspection you run into someone

  Stand for awhile, or have coffee in a smoky shop

  And reading between the lines of the conversation

  You both squat at the entrances of your caves of gloom

  Appalled at the pattern, and the metropolitan rite

  Of half knowing many people; ushered thro’ the showroom

  Then exit on the footpath - So long - Good night.

  The Pauline Group, no date 1955

  THE RAT

  Colin Black

  I read of a rat entering a child’s bedroom

  In Redfern, and pictured the creature’s progress

  Coming in stealthily, smelling, surveying,

  His way, then purposefully up the bedpost.

  The exploit, the fertility of the thing struck me,

  The beast’s assurance and calculation:

  His brown-bigness passing for a cat’s size,

  The subtle directness of his deceit.

  He walks with purpose up the body

  Beneath the blankets, which wakes up,

  Sees only the familiar cat beside him

  Crawling up his neck, but is mistaken.

  DIRGE FOR NOVICES

  Julian Woods

  Timidly, with some fear and wavering,

  Adventuring with others of a kind

  To be within the self an unreflecting king

  Leaving the days of vassalage behind.

  To reach more than a vacant isolation,

  But a real lion quality sheathing its own claws,

  If only a roaring silhouette on the barren horizon

  It will concern the myriads, make them pause.

  And then when age old aches grow strong

  To work out through the nostrils even pity

  In strictly personal answers, and before very long

  It will be the outline for a mighty city.

  The chorus for such a fancy has long been sniggering,

  The frill-neck lizard, rock like and proud

  Stiffly erect will defy the most powerful thing,

  Yet looks ridiculous before the jaws of the mongrel crowd.

  And let us take for ourselves this sign

  That a true peace comes and tyranny relents,

  Two drunken envoys toasting as they dine,

  It’s friendship at la
st between two continents.

  REMONSTRATION

  Richard Appleton

  Certain poets who should know better,

  Have bid me mind my subject matter,

  Supposing - and they do no doubt -

  My words might twist my brains about;

  But matter, words, or other media

  Are slaves …

  To onomatopoeia.

  LAMENT FOR THE CORRUPTION OF NOBLE QUALITIES

  Jeremy Nelson

  The hawk has fallen,

  Wounded from flight

  To a desert of frost and fire.

  He has cracked in the cold of the night

  The flint of his carnal desire,

  The arrow of rage

  Has hunted with iron the stone of his heart

  In the height of his craving years:

  The years that he hunted for power alone,

  Still the rat was careless in mocking his fears

  While the heart of the hawk had flown.

  [POEM]

  Julian Woods

  The ragings of ravishing time,

  The unspent hunger of insensible time,

  The aspects of decay, the roars of death,

  Volleys, shots, and curses flying,

  Crusts and shells and skeletons,

  Their charges scooped away.

  One of its relics whimpers around us,

  Crying for an old glory.

  Something gone and descended into the dust

  Stirs and sings in the shadows,

  Grinning skull of Christ

  And cross-bones stretched on high

  Beckon the living to the dead

  And death has a double victory

  For it is so easy to go,

  A much easier thing to do

  Than leave heroic relics of your own.

  The Pauline Group, September 1955

  “NIGHT SOUNDS AND REALIZATIONS ………”

  Barrie (?) Gillman. (B.W.F.G.)

  Standing on the underbrush

  Of deferential underlip

  Listening to the awesome silence

  am I …

  Endeavouring to discover why

  The sounds that thrive in the

  encompassing quiet …

  Are not visible tonight ……

  Picture me …

  Trying hard to capture

  the invisible unsung songs

  As warm and various as love

  The wild lyrics

  of whispering nature ……

  The virtuous white dove

  That exists in my slumbering

  drugged breast,

  Thrives on me …

  the

  pillow

  pain

  and

  jealousy

  At its own request

  More fool I

  For seeking out the judge of consciousness ……

  Reprieved from the guilt

  of young ideals

  I am the spirit sponsor

  Who takes kinship

  With the credulous sons

  Of human decency …

  Now,

  I ask myself … ring out the night sounds

  with all available clarity ……

  I am burning candles

  Tall and stutter faultless

  To a higher hero beacon

  of illogical warning

  known love …

  And ghettos of sanely

  incremental duress flicker plainly ……

  Don’t …

  Try and claim the national sounds

  of darkness,

  Nor …

  Endeavour to attain the bouncing

  mirror moon

  For the most relaxed of noble words

  I found with surprise

  Is hidden in your sparkling eyes

  And …

  Is called life ………………

  “HOMINO, HOMO, LUPUS ……TCH, TCH …MAN”

  Barrie (?) Gillman (B.W.F.G.)

  Sunday living

  Sweetly sighing

  Creptoc …

  Ribjoint …

  Paris, New Jersey ……

  People crawling

  Babes in harm

  Cheapskate,

  Elusive,

  Green cod …

  Abusive

  Man among the elephants ……

  Day of God

  and

  salted cod

  Cars

  and

  Bars

  and

  Etruscan art ………

  Buck eyes

  White skin

  Fleecy lawns

  Wide striped

  ‘lescents,

  Bearing within

  Their Sunday presence

  Hatred

  and

  Gin …………

  Street curbed desire

  High corner

  Slats

  and

  Tats

  Fish love eyes

  Braids

  and

  Jades

  Integrated surprise ………

  Pleasant

  soft

  hell,

  The old church

  wrinkled warden,

  possessed

  of

  a

  hard bell

  Verdent vibrations

  in

  the

  air

  Scale and zebras

  The running stations

  My Aunt Agatha

  Black lace

  Tinselled

  voice

  Hypocritical face

  What

  a

  way

  To incline a head …………

  Terra cotta

  and

  me

  Canvas hammocks

  the

  young

  oak

  tree

  magnificent

  repressions

  the

  little

  bitch

  across

  the

  avenue

  Life is bloody ………

  Shetland ‘overs

  village

  concerts

  hardware

  stores

  and

  family

  bores

  interstellar

  intuition

  I

  will be

  the

  last

  person

  to

  go

  to

  the

  moon amen, vale, tch, redic …

  My

  name

  is

  black

  opposed

  to

  royal

  and

  yellow

  is

  not

  even

  a

  colour

  besides

  olive

  is

  grained

  with

  J.C.’s

  contusions

  This is he never live but let alone ………

  “PLACID CONCEPTIONS AND I ………”

  Barrie (?) Gillman (B.W.F.G.)

  I am so

  terribly impatient

  Like a confidential register

  Speed through inarticulate ideas

  (Been doing it for years)

  Making horrible decisions

  Beating my head

  on a literary banister

  Having the darned poetic

  premonitions …………

  Hear this …

  from a friend, the popular trend

  (about me)

  “Wonderful chap

  quite a fertile

  imaginative brain

  But … every time he

  writes or plays … I’m

  positive he does it

  in a daze ……

  (Doesn’t quite k
now

  what he’s doing or saying) ……

  Ah yes …

  The gropers

  (Like me)

  Must endeavour

  to live wisely … and see

  (and hear)

  All that is to be seen

  (and heard)

  Like music … the chime

  (and rhyme)

  That is …

  Of the herd ……………

  It’s rather odd you know

  But …

  (Disregard the grimace on my face)

  every time I look

  backwards over my right shoulder

  I seem …

  to fall naturally into place …

  _____Retrogression?? ………

  Par example …

  I am an elegant Viennese bakery

  Which churns out …

  (delicately)

  Much mocha cake,

  For Dorothy and …

  Out of Towners …

  Yes,

  Just for their sake

  I am in existence …………

  I am inclined

  rather to overemphasise,

  The natural alien tidbits

  Like stepped down, swept up

  colour

  and noncommittal composition …………

  I remember

  yes I recall

  Whilst as a paying member

  Of the …:

  “Philosophical Excursions Association”

  I was rapped on the back by a rather

  enormous apparition,

  Namely …

  “Dorothy in the shape of a cylindrical gas tank”

  I attach importance to this trifle

  Because I seem to realize,

  That it signifies something

  If … not all,

  Like corduroyed beplaided bibbies,

  And,

  A brightly painted

  rubber ball …………

  The only thing at present

  I can visualize … those two

  ruby pendants …

  dangling from the jades immortal

  eyes …

  And yogis shrieking to the skies

  Whilst hanging from the ceiling

  by

  chancy

  woven

  must

  have

  absolute

  faith

  ties …………

  I wonder

  if life means as much

  to you

  Or rather means anything

  …… at all

  … Cheers!!!

 


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