by David Malouf
Also by David Malouf
Fiction
Ransom
The Complete Stories
Every Move You Make
Dream Stuff
The Conversations at Curlow Creek
Remembering Babylon
The Great World
Antipodes
Harland’s Half Acre
Child’s Play
Fly Away Peter
An Imaginary Life
Johnno
Non-fiction
12 Edmondstone Street
A First Place
The Writing Life
Poetry
Earth Hour
Selected Poems: Revolving Days
Typewriter Music
First Things Last
Wild Lemons
Neighbours in a Thicket
Bicycle and Other Poems
Libretti
Jane Eyre
Baa Baa Black Sheep
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Version 2.0
Being There
ePub ISBN 9780857987235
First published by Knopf in 2015
Copyright © David Malouf 2015
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
A Knopf book
Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060
www.randomhouse.com.au
Random House Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com/offices.
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Malouf, David, 1934– author.
Being there / David Malouf.
ISBN 9780857987235 (ebook)
Sydney Opera House – In art.
Sydney Opera House – In literature.
Arts
Performing arts
Music.
A828.3
Cover design by Christabella Designs
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*A vertical line indicates that voices are simultaneous
*I creep through the woods stealthy, savage, my rifle cocked. Your image hangs there before me, your sweet image. No doubt you are strolling quietly through field and lovely valley. Alas, does my fast-fading image not once present itself to you? The image of a man who roams the world. Heartsick, uneasy because he must leave you, and roam now to the east, now to the west. When I think of you, it’s as if I was looking into the moon. A quietness steals over me – I do not know what’s happening to me
* A simple soul rode out to confront the blue, his coat-tails flying. His white horse challenged clouds for the honour of it. But his noble coat-tails came to grief, their tattered rags tumbled along the skyline
* Words have no meaning
** Madness
* Never, never, never ever
*Together
* Listen now
** Do you understand?
* Oh Jesus, save me now. You, my beloved!
