by Mark Pirie
the bird in its whoops-a-daisy
voice. It has gone.
We think we hear it singing
from a distant tree.
Since
when
have birds the gift of prophecy?
38
Vivienne Plumb
The Last Day of the World
That will be the day none of the eggs will cook. There will be strange phenomena. Babies born with three ears. White elephants.
Stains will appear on the wall. The heavens will open at midday and the rain will rattle down upon us. Ants will act like individuals.
At home, the mail will never arrive. The silver beet and parsley will run to seed in twenty-four hours, and the stove will not light.
Everything that insurance policies refuse to cover, will happen.
The clock hands will move in reverse. The horrors will come upon us. Burning fi res and a smell like fi ve hundred sliced durians will prevail. There will be the sound of great fl apping wings. The porridge will go bad. Chasms will slide open. We will never speak to each other again. It will be dark and our old lives will be nothing but a disappearing pinprick of light on the road ahead.
39
Louis Johnson
Four Poems From the Strontium Age
1.
Before the Day of Wrath
There were cities here in the hills
In my great-grandfather’s youth
Where now are only blackened bricks and walls
Devoured in the year of wrath.
And in the desert where none of us
Dare venture, hearing tell
Of fabulous, dangerous monsters, fl owers
Were said to emerge when rare rain fell.
Today the rain draws blood; the winds
Burn out our eyes; the barbarous
Plants tear fl esh that never mends:
Sweet water-holes turn suddenly poisonous.
It must have been a lovely country once,
Populous and inventive – a golden age
Wherein the young knew laughter, loved to dance
Even grew old. Daylight as bright as courage
Existed for many hours at a time, we’re told.
But these, perhaps, are fables meant to inspire
Us now in the darkness helping us to hold
Something to cherish crouched by the guttering fi re.
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2.
It’s An Ill Wind …
There was a time when the patterns did not change
So frequently, so our instructor says.
In those days a girl would have thought it strange
To have two or three heads, to praise
Her lover’s thirty-nine fi ngers with all her tongues,
And her narrow chest contained one set of lungs.
But how strange that would be to one of our modern youths
Who can pick out a girl with a breast for each of his mouths.
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3.
Spring
All day the black rain has fallen
And now, in the hour of light
The livid river and the lake are swollen;
The range of hills that were bright
And red with their carpet of dust
Are dissolving away. Soon there will be
No shelter: again we must
Pack and move in search of kinder country.
Then will begin again that dread migration
Through sightless deserts, and the silent land
Refl ecting sickness into our eyes, starvation
Bloating the children with its grotesque hand.
And never knowing which way is the best
To set the foot because the perils met there
Can never be foreseen nor wholly guessed,
For who can tell what colour of the air
Harbours most pain? Surely the Spring
Is the most bitter season of suffering.
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4.
Haven
We have come to a quiet valley in the hills
Where a road, this time unbroken, runs
Right back to the desert fringe. It fi lls
Us with a dreaming hope. The sun’s
Mild light is clean; about and above
The slopes are grassy. In our ears
The little river sings a song like love.
In the old country, for two thousand years
There ruled a king called God, the story goes.
It seems impossible, but here is a place
Where one might trust to fable. Flowers grow
And trees stand straight beside the watercourse.
Let us not be afraid. After two days and nights
In such a haven, we fear that we may have brought
With us those breeding poisons of the world’s blight
That will blacken the earth here and pollute the light.
And already the leaders confer in the common interest,
And it’s rumoured that they plan to eliminate
The sickliest and those of us who are least
Like men should be. Oh, may we all grow straight
In this place of the sun. Let me not think of these
Cruel facts of life in this valley of green trees.
43
Michael O’Leary
Nuclear Family – A Fragment
In dreams I walked
Through crowded, confused streets
Where people, scurrying like rats
on a sinking ship
Ran in all directions towards survival
In dreams I moved
Through a human fog
It was my single purpose
That kept me going, and
Kept me from going insane,
To
fi nd you and the child whom I love
When I saw you in the hall of mirrors
Like all the other victims
you radiated decay
Your hair had shrivelled and gone grey overnight
I held my arms outstretched
Hoping you and your child would embrace me
But you turned away
and she ran to you, as if I were
a stranger
I picked up my gun
And went outside where things weren’t quite
so grim
(I mean this war has killed love
so what’s a pile of rotting bodies)
In my uniform, I watched the beauty of
another atomic fl ash
A tank drove by
I jumped aboard
And we headed toward
The war which can never be won!
44
Ruth Gilbert
Still Centre
Noon turned to night;
Atomic-voiced
The thunder mushroomed overhead,
Windows and mirrors screamed with light,
But placidly she went on kneading bread:
‘A chimney down, or maybe two,’ she said.
45
Fleur Adcock
Last Song
Goodbye, sweet symmetry. Goodbye, sweet world
of mirror-images and matching halves,
where animals have usually four legs
and people nearly always two;
where birds and bats and butterfl ies and bees
have balanced wings, and even fl ies
can fl y straight if they try. Goodbye
to one-a-side for eyes and ears and arms
and breasts and balls and shoulder-blades
and hands; goodbye to the straight line
drawn down the central spine,
making us double in a world
where oddness is acceptable only
under the sea, for the lopsided lobster,
the wonky oyster, the creepily rotated
fl atfi sh with both eyes over one gill;
goodbye to the sweet certitudes of our
mammal
ian order, where to be
born with one eye or three thumbs
points to not being human. It will come.
In the next world, when this one’s gone skew-whiff,
we shall be algae or lichen, things
we’ve hardly even needed to pronounce.
If the fl ounder still exists it will be king.
46
Rob Jackaman
from Lee: A Science Fiction Poem
4. Viaticum
‘I dreamed I saw St. Augustine
Alive as you or me,
Moving through these quarters
In the utmost misery… ’
– Bob Dylan, ‘I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine’
Though it was true
Sometimes the radiation
Sickness hung in pockets
In the mountains where he worked
Nothing halted his task
Of reconstructing the past
On the evidence available.
And his collection grew:
Miraculously
saved
An empty bottle a tin can
Jagged and bleeding
With rust the coil
Of a small motor –
In general the cogs and springs
That make a world
Tick.
Lost
In the
past passing
For a living man and all the while
A corpse, and another week
Gone another
Week further away
47
From the past
(groping
for…)
Though I can see the towns
Are hungry how
The buildings are thin and grey
And I see
windows with the light
Glinting blankly in them
(may they be washed clean)
And empty auditoriums
Littered with remains,
And the air vents on the sky –
Scrapers sniffi ng for clean air
And the drains like mouths
Grinning in the gutters
(may
all
these
too
Be purifi ed)
With a fi lm of oil
Over the lips, and my hands and feet
Throbbing in the heat,
And hurrying to be on time but
Too
late
too
late
too late
too late too late
And he woke up, and it was time
To start searching again.
Yellow ochre
Cliffs of clay
Etched by the storms
Into strange shapes
Like slaves
rising from the earth,
Salt pans where an estuary had boiled
Dry, fl at shallows
With fl oating scum and weird
Spiked plants scattered
and
refl ections
48
Of dark birds in the air, and
Sticky water
over the eyes and
Thirst.
So it must have been
In the beginning
After the fi rst creation
When things
Hatched, and the pterodactyl
Was the word.
So it was now with Lee
In his mind wandering
A martyr in the sand;
with wind
Singing like choirs
Of Hollywood trebles in the wings
For the show
down
he
came
Over a ridge and there
Like Lazarus
rising
above
Dead rock
a building (in the old style
Called sky-scraper, a column of a
Million pigeon-holes
For housing all the souls
That teem in the city);
And upward it reared
Into the heavens
And the sky opened for it and
A light shone out
And then,
voice breaking through
The silence
The
bomb
fell.
49
Marilyn Duckworth
Thin Air
Gulping thin air of an ecological nightmare –
Animals mutated, the children screaming –
She woke to the pandemonium of a still house.
Alone now, she kicked the stiff mechanism of reassurance.
Go back to sleep – it was only a nasty dream.
Too late.
She already knew the dream was certainly real.
Not here, not now, but somewhere, some day,
She would pick up her feet among the red insects,
Carrying her children high on breaking shoulders,
Trembling before the poisonous distance to safety,
Murmuring in their little lemon coloured ears
The reassurances she could not now, or ever
Give to herself.
50
Fiona Kidman
An aftermath
for J.M. Coetzee
The nightmare of the fl ood
had left the landscape pockmarked
and blue like the moon and then
the looting began and the man
wearing round spectacles made of smoke
coloured non-refl ective
glass walked over the pitted
world with the woman with red
hair that would have shone in the sun
if there had been any left, shooting
the looters. Angry dogs, savage
and at loose, sprang at the couple
of the man with the shaded eyes handed
his pistol to the woman with red
hair, instructing her to shoot the animals.
When they came to me he handed
me the pistol and instructed
me to shoot the woman
in the stomach. The red strands and the blue
clay were mixed on the surface of the earth
and it was quite clearly my fault, though
it seemed I would be allowed
to go without questioning.
51
Kevin Ireland
Instructions About Global Warming
for Michael Sharkey
It all began when I suggested that
it could be useful to talk about the weather.
It seemed to me to be a harmless issue.
It could not possibly disturb our friendships,
our businesses could continue as normal
and members of friendly communities
would be able to join in the discussion
without fi rst looking under their beds.
Yet the subject turned out to be
not quite what it might have been.
Nearly everyone was of the same mind
only on this one point. So it seemed politic
to me that we should take a long break
to see whether we could sort out some
of the minor disagreements and put a stop
to the anguish, mutterings and threats …
When we returned I considered it sensible
to wear body armour and a steel helmet,
and to carry a riot shield. I also had to insist
on being addressed as Sir. Someone
had to take charge, for my audience seemed
to have a touch of sunstroke. It was expedient
to station guards with guns around the hall
to protect sanity and the water supply.
52
The climate was a neutral subject, but if people are now going to have to be cast out to die
for answering back about cloud formations,
temperatures, gale
s and droughts, we must regard it
as nature’s way of sorting out the competition.
They ought to try not to be so damned selfi sh.
There are variables in the sky that they are soon
going to have to sign up to once and for all.
53
Altered States
Iain Sharp
Karen Carpenter Calls Interplanetary Craft
Extinction nigh, desperate for warmth,
the fuel-starved bodies of anorexics
sprout hair brow to toe as a makeshift blanket.
Karen clasps her furry digits and beams
a fi nal telepathic telegram
to cosmic rovers. Somewhere organisms
must thrive outside the food chain, free from grub
and shit, enduring for centuries, perhaps
forever, and thus free from hormonal surges,
free to say goodbye to love, except the kind
of sibling fondness Karen feels for Richard,
but without the prickles, without the need
to let Richard doodle elephantine
overtures (lest he fume or cry) before
Karen’s silky alto cuts to the quick.
Once she wished for an alien rescuer
like Michael Rennie as Klaatu in The Day
The Earth Stood Still – all brylcreemed aquiline
superiority in his sexy lurex
jumpsuit. But she’s gone beyond such aching,
beyond panic, beyond rescue. She’d just like to hope
someone in the universe has got it right –
hairless, smooth, no mess, no odour, empowered
joule by joule direct from a benign sun.
57
Gordon Challis
The Thermostatic Man
The world could fall to pieces any moment now; with luck it won’t, mainly because it hasn’t yet. Though cracks appear, I’ll merely count them leeway spaces left so masses may expand to meet and don’t.
But I, who used to walk bolt upright, this day bow as meek as wheat: how can I be sure I shall not always fear to face fi erce heat, to face the sun, not watch my shadow lagging back behind,
and feel complete?
From strips of many metals am I made. I grow beneath the sun unevenly. I cannot cry lest the least tear should cool down one soft element and strain the others. I am bland, bend to become the thermostat which keeps my spirit burning low. One day I shall perhaps be tried by a more humble, human fi re which, blending all my elements in one alloy, will let me stand upright, ready to fall.
58
