are almost fully submerged!
Flowing steadily, let it rise,2
this raging flood.
1 Pukapannya is a small island covered with dense trees, near the bank of the De Grey River just below where the De Grey homestead stands. Kurrunya Pool is just downstream from it.
2 The permissive suffix –mara often expresses an attitude of resignation; here it’s not that the composer wants the flood to keep on rising, but that there is no way he can stop it.
Pukapannya
Warntaparri nguru-nguruya nganyjarranga
Pukapannyakapu!
Piparu, ngarramanimara, kurlurrumarnunya
Griffith Watkins (b.1930 d.1969)
Heatwave
Except that it is happening to us,
the 105 reads like a death toll in
Paraguay.
Up in the newspaper offices, the girls
are taking paper and files in and out
of the air-conditioned rooms, chiming
softly, their blouses and brown legs
as cool as dolphins.
The cadets and copy boys stand around
the water-cooler playing noughts and
crosses on the frosted glass.
In his office, the sub-editor is slashing
with his red pencil. He reads the heading —
fresh violence and thinks of the salad he
had for lunch.
Out along the river the bandy trees
are perfectly still, canonizing someone
we don’t know.
The glassy water curves like a bottle,
stabbing out frazzled splinters of light.
Between two elms, a young man is attempting
to eat his girl.
The gulls are standing under the sprinklers,
geometrically spaced, patient.
Which the detectives up at the city lock-up are not.
The prisoner keeps giving them the same answers.
One of them sends out for cokes, leaving the
prisoner out of the order.
But still he won’t change his story.
‘Now come on,’ the detective sergeant asks.
‘What did you do with it?’
‘Do with what?’ the prisoner sneers, and wipes
the sweat from the top of his lying mouth.
Down at the beach the sun sits out over
the reef like the Fat Lady at last November’s Royal Show.
A wisp of a breeze searches for a shell to hide in.
Under the shadehouses the families crouch like refugees.
A girl, tanned better than leather and wearing
a white bathing suit, comes out of the water.
The sand snaps at her bare feet.
Up the coast, a pall of smoke climbs into the
bleached blue of the sky and tries to make
itself into the shape of a dragon.
Over at the zoo the tropical fish don’t care,
spell coded messages to each other with their tails.
With the birds, it is different.
They are suffering even though their keeper
spends all his time going from cage to cage
spraying them with a hose.
The parrots hang upside down and let the water
trickle into their feathers while the small
birds flutter through the showers of silver
drops and make beep noises.
Those visitors who go beyond the bird cages
to gloat at the bears, the bored cats and the
panting monkeys are sadists and deserve
their own special hell.
At five the rush starts.
The glasses of beer move like convoys.
The cricket scores take second billing to
the thermometer up at the Weather Bureau.
The sun still has a sting.
All the train windows are down and the cars
are melting into their shadows.
The sun is reluctant to call it a day.
While waiting for it to hiss into the sea,
people, at home, sit on their front verandahs
and complain.
After the sun finally sets, its stain is hard
to eradicate.
Cars fall down the drives and burp off towards the beaches.
Sports cars swim along the esplanades like sharks,
blurting obscenities from their exhausts.
The sea bulges.
The whisking waves rattle conquests of shells.
Lovers come out later when the stars are clever.
Fishermen cast their rods and stand like sculpture.
Cigarettes peck the gloom.
Voices are like fairy floss.
The night tells its name and is loved like
a lost child.
Bar Brawl
Their hides stretched tight
particularly over their hollow faces
where the shallow clefts of muscle broke
out jigsaws, and their arms going stiff
with fright, their bodies hanging back on
their locked knees, they pitched unwillingly
into each other’s knotted fear.
Around them the blabbing voices stopped
as their tension leapt out like electricity
from hand, jaw and mouth. And crookedly and
ugly their fists fell out of their shivering
sleeves, the blows skidding over the soft,
welcoming flesh, their breaths sucking and their
eyes glazed — bearing no witness.
We caught them up and almost reluctantly
dragged them apart, noting that the struggle
they gave us was only a token gesture as they
were both thankful for our interference. When
they took up their glasses once more, their
hands shook so violently that they had to put
them down.
Ee Tiang Hong (b.1933 d.1990)
Coming To
It was a blind corner,
I remember, I couldn’t think
to brake somehow, still less in time,
that moment round the bend —
a shock of water, overwhelming sea
where should have been a road,
a bridge over the river,
I mean even in flood.
A sensation of floating,
car engine dumb as cork,
I must have passed out
as under ether, I guess,
head just above water,
body vague as sponge,
below the knees, adrift
as slush, at one with.
On terra firma Australis —
don’t ask me how I got out, Eddy,
and Bruce, this isn’t a suicide note,
Heaven forbid!
No sailing to Byzantium either,
thankful just to have survived —
around an edge of consciousness,
new faces, fellow Australian.
And voices, a country woman asking:
‘Where y’ from?’
Her husband stands up tall
by their four-wheel drive,
looks me up and down:
‘Jesus! What on earth!’
And so, uncertain, ‘Perth,’
I said, from down under.
‘I mean before that.’
‘Oh! Malaysia.
(O, Malaysia).’
‘And you like it here?’
‘For sure. It’s all right, really;
the family, too. They’re safe, ahead,
I think — we travel separately’ —
beyond the sometime river
into the future.
Perth
The city has no centre, focal landmark,
no Place de la Concorde, Padang Merdeka, Tien An Men,
no particular square, terrace, public park.
On important days citizens do
not converge,
as elsewhere, for a common purpose — they feel
no urge to (there’s no compulsion);
would rather windsurf, sprawl on a beach, go bush,
or some place else, even overseas (if it’s
not too far, not too expensive).
Alternatively, might as well stay home,
weed, mow the lawn, try a new recipe, barbecue,
lounge, have a beer, watch tv (Love you Perth).
Of course. Or else. Yet sometimes,
for a while, I’d rather be away
from family, neighbours, visiting friends;
be all alone, to daydream, diverge, de-centred.
But no looking back to brood, and not too far ahead,
just the opposite foreshore, Bassendean.
And the Swan, quiet, deathly pale at evening.
Fay Zwicky (b.1933)
Kaddish
For my Father born 1903, died at sea, 1967
Lord of the divided, heal!
Father, old ocean’s skull making storm calm and the waves to sleep,
Visits his first-born, humming in dreams, hiding the pearls that were
Behind Argus, defunct Melbourne rag. The wireless shouts declarations of
War. ‘Father,’ says the first-born first time around (and nine years dead),
Weeping incurable for all his hidden skills. His country’s Medical Journal
Laid him out amid Sigmoid Volvulus, Light on Gastric Problems, Health Services
For Young Children Yesterday Today and Tomorrow which is now and now and now and
Never spoke his name which is Father a war having happened between her birth, his
Death: Yisborach, v’yistabach, v’yispoar, v’yisroman, v’yisnaseh — Hitler is
Dead. The Japanese are different. Let us talk of now. The war is ended.
Strangers found you first. Bearing love back, your first-born bears their praise
Into the sun-filled room, hospitals you tended, city roofs and yards, ethereal rumours.
Gray’s Inn Road, Golden Square, St George’s, Birmingham, Vienna’s General, the
Ancient Alfred in Commercial Road where, tearing paper in controlled strips, your
First-born waited restless and autistic, shredding life, lives, ours. ‘Have to
See a patient. Wait for me,’ healing knife ready as the first-born, girt to kill,
Waited, echoes of letters from Darwin, Borneo, Moratai, Brunei (‘We thought him
Dead but the little Jap sat up with gun in hand and took a shot at us’,) the heat
A pressing fist, swamps, insect life (‘A wonderful war’ said his wife who also
Waited) but wait for me wait understand O wait between the lines unread.
Your first-born did not. Tested instead the knife’s weight.
* * *
Let in the strangers first: ‘Apart from his high degree of medical skill he
Possessed warmth’ (enough to make broken grass live? rock burst into flower?
Then why was your first-born cold?) But listen again: ‘It was impossible for
Him to be rude, rough, abrupt.’ Shy virgin bearing gifts to the proud first and
Only born wife, black virgin mother. Night must have come terrible to such a
Kingdom. All lampless creatures sighing in their beds, stones wailing as the
Mated flew apart in sorrow. Near, apart, fluttered, fell apart as feathered
Hopes trembled to earth shaken from the boughs of heaven. By day the heart
Was silent, shook in its box of bone, alone fathered three black dancing imps.
The wicked, the wise and the simple to jump in the house that Jack built: This
Is the priest all shaven and shorn who married the man all tattered and torn
Who kissed the maiden all forlorn who slaughtered the ox who drank the water
Who put out the fire who burnt the staff who smote the dog who bit the cat who
Ate the kid my father bought from the angel of death: ‘Never heard to complain,
Response to inquiry about his health invariably brought a retort causing laughter.’
Laughter in the shadow of the fountain, laughter in the dying fire, laughter
Shaking in the box of bone, laughter fastened in the silent night, laughter
While the children danced from room to room in the empty air.
What ailed the sea that it fled? What ailed the mountains, the romping lambs
Bought with blood? Tremble, earth, before the Lord of the Crow and the Dove
Who turned flint into fountain, created the fruit of the vine devoured by the
Fox who bit the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate up Jack
Who built the house: Yisgaddal v’yiskaddash sh’meh rabbo — miracle of seed,
Mystery of rain, the ripening sun and the failing flesh, courses of stars,
Stress from Sinai.
Let (roared God)
Great big Babylon
Be eaten up by Persia
Be eaten up by Greece
Be eaten up by Rome
Be eaten up by Ottoman
Be eaten up by Edom
Be eaten by Australia
Where Jack’s house shook.
Be (said Jack’s Dad)
Submissive to an elder
Courteous to the young
Receive all men with
Cheerfulness and
Hold your tongue.
Strangers, remember Jack who did as he was told.
* * *
To the goddess the blood of all creatures is due for she gave it,
Temple and slaughterhouse, maker of curses like worm-eaten peas:
As the thunder vanishes, so shall the woman drive them away
As wax melts before flame, so let the ungodly perish before her:
She is mother of thunder, mother of trees, mother of lakes,
Secret springs, gate to the underworld, vessel of darkness,
Bearer, transformer, dark nourisher, shelterer, container of
Living and dead, coffin of Osiris, dark-egg devourer, engenderer,
Nurturer, nurse of the world, many-armed goddess girdled by cobras,
Flame-spewer, tiger-tongued queen of the dead and the violent dancers.
Mother of songs, dancer of granite, giver of stone —
Let his wife speak:
‘Honour thy father and thy mother’
So have I done and done and done — no marriage shall ever
Consume the black maidenhead — my parents are heaven
Bound. I shall rejoin them;
Bodies of men shall rejoin severed souls
At the ultimate blast of invisible grace.
Below, I burn,
Naomi of the long brown hair, skull in a Juliet cap.
Do the dead rot? Then rot as I rot as they rot.
‘Honour thy Father’ sing Armistice bells, espressivo.
The stumbling fingers are groping
To pitch of perfection.
I am that pitch
I am that perfection.
Papa’s a civilian again, mother is coiled in a corset,
Dispenses perfection with:
Castor oil
Tapestry
Tablecloths (white)
Rectal thermometers
Czerny and prunes
Sonatinas of Hummel
The white meat of chicken
The white meat of fish
The maids and the lost silver.
Lord, I am good for nothing, shall never know want.
Blinded, I burn, am led not into temptation.
The home is the centre of power.
There I reign
Childless. Three daughters, all whores, all —
Should be devoured by the fires of Gehenna
Should be dissolved in the womb that bore them
Should wander the wastelands forever.
Instead, they dance.
&
nbsp; Whole towns condemn me. Flames from the roofs
Form my father’s fiery image. He waves, laughs,
Cools his head among stars, leaves me shorn,
Without sons, unsanctified, biting on
Bread of affliction. Naked, I burn,
Orphaned again in a war.
The world is a different oyster:
Mine.
His defection will not be forgotten.
* * *
Blessed be He whose law speaks of the three different characters of children whom
we are to instruct on this occasion:
What says the wicked one?
‘What do you all mean by this?’
This thou shalt ask not, and thou hast transgressed, using you and excluding thyself.
Thou shalt not exclude thyself from:
The collective body of the family
The collective body of the race
The collective body of the nation
Therefore repeat after me:
‘This is done because of what the Eternal did
For me when I came forth from Egypt.’
The wicked wants always the last word (for all the good
It does): ‘Had I been there, I would still not be worth
My redemption.’ Nothing more may be eaten, a beating will
Take place in the laundry. Naked.
‘Honour thy father and thy mother’
What says the wise one?
‘The testimonies, statutes, the judgments delivered by God I accept.’
Nonetheless, though thou are wise,
After the paschal offering there shall be no dessert.
‘Honour thy father and thy mother’
What says the simple one?
Asks merely: ‘What is this?’
Is told: ‘With might of hand
Did our God bring us forth out of Egypt
From the mansion of bondage.’
Any more questions? Ask away and be damned.
‘Honour thy father and thy mother’
* * *
Yisborach, v’yistabach, v’yispoar, v’yisroman, v’yisnaseh, v’yishaddor,
v’yisalleh, v’yishallol, sh’meh d’kudsho, b’rich hu
Praise death who is our God
Live for death who is our God
Die for death who is our God
Blessed be your failure which is our God
Oseh sholom bim’romov, hu yaaseh sholom, olenu v’al kol yisroel, v’imru Omen.
* * *
And he who was never born and cannot inquire shall say:
There is a time to speak
and a time to be silent
There is a time to forgive
and a time in which to be
The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry Page 13
