Unmanned | Page 4

They come?at the appointed hour when?the boy who serves as?runner to the Beautiful Lady?arrives, breathless, with?the Word. Occasionally,?the statue weeps paint-fresh?tears. They will leave?once faith is gathered in?abundance like so many wild?flowers off the nearest mountain?slope. Here under a glass?blown moon, a cool wind shall?leave this place sacred.
Stork
The scene is of a deep rural setting done by one unhurried?Impressionist, say, pre-World War 1, c.1907. Everything?luxuriant, soft and round, the paint is combed out by cordial summer breezes. Countryside: Poland, a rained-on morning,?the distant plash of milk into wooden pails sounds thinner?than its clotted creaminess. The cobbled yard is blue and wet after the mornings sluicing; alder, elm or poplar windbreaks, but what shows through is the church spire you would observe if you lifted your gaze up from the unhitched wagon, its spars tilted off skyward from the fields, past chimney, gable, and farmstead. The stork is here on its top (though) bottom heavy nest of thickly woven twigs which throws the scene into surreal proportion, suggesting a still hour of witches and moonlight moving stealthily through the forests black patches. Stork, calm as a weathervane (a model) presides over maize and barley crops, that brighten through weeks of high summer, stretch tight as a canvas to the nearby farms, and further still, to centuries old, grassy marshlands from which the stork feeds its nestlings.
Unmanned
Take this day, lonely as a man in?an empty house, at his window, the wintry yard?below.
Sea calm. The moon scatters its?coinage. A rubber dinghy bucks an orectic?surf. Pebble beach. The conning-tower signals:
which came first, meaning or memory?
One flashlight winks hungrily under seacliffs,?and then the flare. This setting becomes?an habitual space, chosen era for commando or?smuggler.
We make our choice, learn that grief comes?regular as sunset.
The bow-wave?turned in chrome coils as the coastline dropped?from view.
Once in a metal-etched hour, people?ran away to America to buildings the colour of?gun-metal, to a sidewalk venting steam?about the ankles of sable-stockinged girls.
How many of us cannot begin the adventure of the?day upon its arrival? The ablutions of the night done?with, the half-bad dreams wiped away, the tensions?of the muscles adjusted in preparation for the
perpendicular, the carpet rolled back, the masks?hung up once more upon the wall at the ready. Each?waking is a starting out from the old country.
The responsibility?of light beckons, unclothes the familiar objects and not?so familiar ones.
Lightning leaves the expression surprised?and the lone tree in the paddock startled with?cinematic glare, unharmed and lovely.
In a homely way,?the headlights sweep the back yard hovering over the?roped-swing in the pelting rain and neighbourhood?of cat & dog. This tells you that the family
is in deep trouble to be called into account in?afteryears while the shutters slap wettish to little?effect.
Shaped as an emu neck, steam extends?over the factory stack from the industrial sector?in this small, southern city. A yellow band?of horizon suggests sunset. The steam dissolves out.
Now runs at 4:15 the see-through veins of rain from?window to sill. A splashed up forest of drops tap out what?is left of this late, ruined day in July.
Here there is no history, if by history you mean?the soul fired in the kiln of time. Here there is only?the compilation of event in a scrap-yard of days?& kicked aside incident.
You can still hear the?settlers squeeze box & fiddle in suburban settlements &?tavern, the landscape-flat accents, the Sky Channel?applause and throat-clearing of smoke exhaust.
We remember the po-faced poets who went away never to?return from the Ambition Wars & Success Sorties.
As always, cars chittering in long queues in the?persimmon light of dusk, on freeways dreary with drizzle?and distance, at the encoded city-bound intersections.
He makes his heroine his addiction and vice versa,?becomes the object of obsession into which safe-zone he?precipitates himself, unmanned.
Away now from that well worn cliche,?the crazy party hat of Sydneys Opera House / the bat-eared?shells
& clouds that muscle reflective buildings
to the O so cloacal coil of green hills round the?rectangular cattle, prominent as so many out-of-town acts?in provincial centres.
You pass smoothly in your car the valley below & there -?an intimate scene: a family gathered shock still: the?overhanging forest imaged on the coffin-lid,
momentarily,?then lowered into shadow. The town lies behind you.
The world will change to that which forgets you?and your enthusiasms will be as a passing fashion. In this?you come to understand the nature of illusion
and the hoped for?expectations of youth, a too well-travelled dream. Here?where life recedes further into distance
you will know yourself as unmanned.
Braidwood
for Judith Wright
Granite & quartz country, once?gold rush, now cattle tread amongst
the white hawthorn and yellow broom;?from Captains Flat to Majors Creek
the creek-beds cut the empty vein.
Hail or heat, the hanged ghost?of Thomas Braidwood rolls out his
oaths big as boulders upon the town:?dust, poverty, despair, drunkenness
before he choked his rage at the?end of a rope, phlegm thick as gossip.
November 4, 1996
Modern Love
1.
They are survivors, the sole?occupants of this one guarded world.?The local repertory theatre