The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry

Home > Other > The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry > Page 17
The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry Page 17

by John Kinsella


  Mary Champion (b.1947)

  Long Park

  It’s pension morning and very quiet as I sit in Long Park. It’s mid-morning now and people begin to move around rushing to and fro, cars zooming past. It starts to get noisy, then our Wongi mob start to come in, looking for the best spots to sit in the cool of the day. Long Park is central, it has everything you might need only a few steps away. There is the Red Rooster across the road, with public toilets on the side; there’s the Woolworths store with a liquor store on the side. So we have a lovely place to sit all day and enjoy a yarn with our friends, with all the things we might need only a few steps away. Yeah, that’s my sister up there and my uncle sitting right up the top and that mob over there are my cousins; we come here every day. But it’s a special day today, it’s pension day. It’s now mid-afternoon and Long Park is nearly full. Everyone’s telling stories. At the same time they seem to be past listening, but who cares? We are all having a good time.

  Jan Teagle Kapetas (b.1947)

  Slaughtering the Lamb

  1.

  On the crossed bars in the dust

  beside the blacksmith’s forge,

  he throws the sheep down belly up,

  legs trussed like spears under a galvanised roof.

  This is a challenge:

  My father wants his daughters strong.

  I am the one who fails him.

  I must look at that rolling eye; show him I see her fight

  the hairy yellow twine; remember how it felt

  tight knotted round my wrist to test my nerve.

  Hold still. Give nothing away.

  One slip and he’ll know.

  Separate yourself from this now,

  before you see the neck drawn back —

  see the dog, the hay fork,

  the bright shaft through the shed’s shadow —

  hand him the knife when he asks;

  let your face be keen,

  be his bold girl.

  2.

  The knife is dull.

  He pedals the wheel, makes the great stone turn

  fast, faster; brings the blade slow balance

  down till the steel screams.

  His face comes over his shoulder.

  ‘Keep an eye on her, Janet.’

  The child sees the sheep on the killing block:

  remembers the rector,

  his tight white collar; his eye for an eye,

  Abraham slaughtering a sheep for the Lord:

  does not trust God.

  He says he does this for me:

  takes the knife, and kills so that I may eat

  a leg roast crisp with potatoes;

  the liver.

  3.

  Old ewe, I am the farmer’s daughter:

  see because he says I must,

  the knife enter your throat,

  your bright blood spurt.

  When shivers run through your body,

  I count seven times

  till the dark blood curdles.

  ‘It’s time you learned,’ he says,

  ‘This is what life’s about.’

  Will a knife run handle deep

  from my throat to soft belly,

  skirt close under the skin?

  Will hands reach in,

  tug deep sinews, intestines?

  4.

  He turns.

  I plunge hands into the bloody wound,

  lift pulsing entrails, heart, stomach bag,

  forearms hot glistening, heaving the weight,

  straining to show daddy his strong girl —

  but the heat quivering out of the sheep,

  the dark stench betrays her snivelling

  tears and snot, mouth spattering egg yellow in the dust.

  ‘Oh, you gutless wonder …’

  This is not allowed.

  He heaves the ewe up on the butcher’s hook,

  takes the child’s shoulders, closes hands about her fists,

  makes her strike, strike again,

  punch off the skin —

  will toughen her yet,

  this daughter.

  Alf Taylor (b.1947)

  Moorditj Yorgah

  You are a cruel

  Deadly moorditj yorgah

  An’ um marrdong for you

  But um

  Just a wintjarren

  Nyoongah man

  But um gonna try

  To get off

  Diss gerbah an’ gunja

  An’ be a cruel

  Deadly moorditj nyoongah man

  You are indeed

  A truly deadly solid

  Moorditj yorgah

  An’ um

  Jerrepjing something wicked

  For you

  But um

  Just a wintjarren nyoongah man

  Um gonna

  Get off

  Diss gerbah an’ gunja

  An’ show you

  What a moorditj man

  I can be

  An gib you

  All da lub

  Dat I can

  But kurndarnj choo

  Um shame

  The Land

  Sitting in the back seat

  of my brother’s car

  reading the Australian

  and glanced briefly

  at my mother’s country

  the red pulsating land before me

  I felt my pulse beat in time

  to energy

  the trees, rocks and soil

  that emerge from my mother’s land.

  I am sure I saw the apparition

  of my ancestors

  emerge from the belly

  of my mother’s beautiful land;

  they waved, sang and danced for me

  in their ceremonial colours.

  Awesome!

  And for my eyes only,

  not the cancerous salinity

  that dies under the hot sun

  after the first, second, third … settlers

  have ripped out all the trees

  in the farming areas of the land

  we have just passed.

  Then scribbling on the newspaper,

  realising I was back to now,

  I put these words down

  and began to think realistically:

  We the Nyoongar people

  of this country

  they call ‘Australia’

  have been traumatised and suppressed

  throughout those assimilation years;

  although our land has been taken

  we must retain and guard

  our boundaries

  as we the Nyoongar people know

  that we don’t own the land

  passed down to us by our forefathers,

  that the land owns us;

  for we must cherish the land,

  the trees, rocks, water,

  the birds and lizards

  that live on our sacred soil —

  care for it

  as we would our children

  our mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters,

  also the elderly, who cared for the land

  long before the birth of Jesus Christ

  so that we

  can tread in their footsteps

  and allow our children to follow.

  Marion May Campbell (b.1948)

  Time Inside

  In the sun-slatted room, listen

  the little cat licks, purrs

  stops absent-mindedly.

  Eyes narrowed, she suspends you

  in amber warmth, lets day fold over you

  until, in any mother’s belly, dark

  you’re less alert to sharp vowels

  of children in their bright space

  far from yours. Now deep inside the water bowl

  receiving only mirrored skies

  you hold at bay all that’s compass slavery

  sextant, vector, set course.

  Somewhere else, heaping up

  are punctual ca
lls unheeded

  terminal clauses tangling.

  Here, only tidal intentions

  sea’s surge & trough or wave slap.

  Glad within this time sack

  that is your life

  turned back so future edge, edge past

  touch to make the loop now

  time out, you are

  amniotically buoyed

  & rhythmed by the not-you

  beating in your belly

  humming in the traffic’s wake.

  Jimmy Chi (b.1948)

  Black Girl

  Black girl, black girl,

  Won’t you love me tonight?

  Come over darlin’ make everything right.

  Black girl, black girl,

  Won’t you love me and then,

  Come over darlin’ and love me again.

  I know, I know,

  It’s hard for you,

  And you know darlin’ it’s hard for me too.

  I know, I know,

  I love you true.

  Come over darlin’ say you love me too.

  Black girl, black girl,

  Won’t you love me tonight?

  Won’t you come over darlin’ make everything right.

  Black girl, black girl,

  Won’t you love me and then,

  Come over darlin’ and love me again.

  Some day, some day,

  We’ll be alright

  Just like it is on this shiny night.

  Some day, some day,

  We’ll have it all.

  ’Cos you know darlin’ you make me stand tall.

  Black girl, black girl,

  Won’t you love me tonight?

  Won’t you come over darlin’ make everything right.

  Black girl, black girl,

  Won’t you love me and then,

  Come over darlin’ and love me again.

  So love, so love,

  Won’t you say you love me?

  We’ll be together eternally.

  So love, so love,

  Won’t you love me and then,

  Come over darlin’ and love me again.

  Black girl, black girl,

  Won’t you love me tonight?

  Won’t you come over darlin’ make everything right.

  Black girl, black girl,

  Won’t you love me and then,

  Come over darlin’ and love me again.

  Black girl, black girl,

  Won’t you love me tonight?

  Won’t you come over darlin’ make everything right.

  Black girl, black girl,

  Won’t you love me and then,

  Come over darlin’ and love me again.

  Dennis Haskell (b.1948)

  The Basis of All Knowledge

  for Cameron

  He is a child

  less than three feet tall, impotent,

  his fingers not yet curled

  around problems.

  He screams with pain

  for the simple fact that

  his teeth bite his gums like needles.

  Take him up.

  He has no beliefs.

  He displays no regret

  nor any knowledge

  of what regret could mean.

  He entrusts you and

  your meaningless arms

  with his whole body,

  with nothing less

  than his whole life.

  Take up what will not be questioned:

  a father given to his son.

  After Chemo

  Your hair is falling like thin rain,

  like mizzle, like long, silent,

  lightening snow. An invisible waterfall,

  your hair cascades

  or lifts away from you

  like gossamer, like an inkbrush

  gifting new patterns to the floors,

  furring our mouths, our thickening thoughts,

  our almost-said words.

  In each corner of each room,

  swirled across the tiles,

  I find them, these networks,

  these fine cobwebs of you;

  they’re flowering down your clothes:

  every jumper, every skirt,

  even your socks are

  laced with these filaments,

  hair like slender moths,

  like will o the wisp,

  these fine threads of you,

  drifting away …

  And our lives are fastened

  by more shadows

  than we cast.

  Your hair

  lisps like autumn blossom,

  aspects of the you

  you used to be

  on racks in the wardrobe,

  alert in the trembling air.

  Just outside the bedcovers,

  the you you were, seeming intact

  but in fact

  we are as we are

  together, alone, as you can see,

  with elusive memories for company,

  with your wisps of hair

  disappearing as gently as breath.

  No-one Ever Found You

  No-one ever found you self-seeking or dishonest.

  Giving is your gift. When you stand

  on the spotted tiles, peeler in hand,

  large-eyed, intent

  on pontiacs, carrots and all the care

  for yet another meal, you think yourself

  ordinary, like the magpies

  that march about outside the windows

  while the afternoon light

  drifts across geraniums, daisies, lawn,

  but nothing and no-one could be more distinct.

  Living never came easily to you. You take everything hard.

  All that we have ever said and done

  seems less than what we meant

  but to know this without saying

  is love’s bequest, the silent embodiment

  that gives our every word its meaning.

  We have shifted cities, our shift

  into each other’s lives so complete

  that any other we could scarcely know.

  Though your eyes are tired, my shoulders bony,

  it matters little where we go,

  how little we know

  and how much our lives have passed,

  our days will be filled with green

  and we grow together like the grass.

  The Trees

  It is a cloudy day when the light

  does not seem ours by right

  but only borrowed, and all time looks

  much later than it deserves to be.

  The land leans out of the window

  at your elbow towards where a sunrise

  of thought, of ideas, of understanding

  should be. Trees mark out distances

  like goals, and there are more of them

  than your mind, or the light,

  can hold. What are they doing there

  to you? What are you doing here

  racing through the uncontrolled landscape

  of your life, all the stations

  that will be given to you?

  Near clouds clot the air and early

  darkness is closing in like fear.

  Beate Josephi (b.1948)

  In Praise of a Second Language

  A second language

  is like a room of one’s own

  to retire to at night when the letters

  and phone calls have been answered

  the demands for attention cease.

  Then I can push away the still lingering phrases

  and go into a clear uncluttered space of words

  untouched by today. Today, for all I know,

  was a mere construction in another language

  to be discontinued at the turn of a key.

  And I turn the key and my words

  are slowly coming home

  homing in on the waiting

  like waiting for the bus at the river


  the river gray and heavily laden with ships.

  I enter the bus, go past the barracks

  the chemical factories, the buildings

  where my father spent forty-two years

  of his working life.

  Then the cement works.

  The conductor calls the familiar names

  calling up names from the past

  vernacular words from Roman

  and medieval times when the island

  hosted tournaments and royal elections.

  Until the bus goes over the bridge

  and I arrive at the ‘Emperor’s Gate’

  in another state but not another language

  which I will not leave until I leave

  the room of my mind.

  Sunil Govinnage (b.1950)

  I Don’t Write Poems in Sinhala Anymore

  for Eric Illyapparchchi

  While you craft your metaphors

  And write as you like

  In Sinhala,

  While you win awards

  I struggle here,

  Under watchful eyes.

  Post-colonial poets

  Look on as I polish

  My words into metaphors.

  At night, when your metaphors cry out

  And shine in their newborn glow,

  I climb cliffs of foreign imagery

  And bleed for a simile.

  I eat, I drink, and worship white poetry;

  I don a white mask

  To overcome the self-pity.

  I send you postcards

  With ‘cool pictures’ of Perth.

  Philip Salom (b.1950)

  Seeing Gallipoli From the Sky

  To remember the veterans with my child-illusion:

  war had turned their faces white

  around the eyes, the skin had gone translucent.

  Or consider the days of Anzac in the streets

  not only those in suits come back on duty

  but the ghosts among their ritual ranks

  always in uniform. That or the shock of sepia

  of platoons just hours before they left:

  that shift across the brain from left to right

  from the hemispheres of fact to dream,

  like troopships crossed the hemispheres

  and left men wondering: was it fact or nightmare?

  Without a template of history to hold these images.

  They soon got one and nothing could shake it.

  Like the enemy it was sudden and total

  and like nothing else in the army

  it fitted their bodies perfectly.

  You see them level and sealed in

  or splayed like asteroids

  among the dimmed star-shells

 

‹ Prev