That best thing of all

It running chasing black

All blur of a thing

It shimmer on its belly

You never kill him

It’s dangerous and like Rainbow to us

You respect that snake cause

It come to earth from the sky

It bring rain and life

Can’t believe I got photo of him

You all gather round

All you mob come here and cheer

This photo I got like Rainbow

All over the ground

At Woolsthorpe Manor,

his childhood home,

the famous apple tree –

or perhaps its latter-day descendent,

a gracious Maid of Kent –

still droops its gnarled arms toward the

clottedness of earth,

giving up its wormed and floury fruit to the grass,

to the possibilities of turbulent

and muddy transformation:

 

Outwitting the plague, he sat for seasons in his quiet house,

its losses and constraints,

the drabness of its close routines;

almost a poet,

he watched

with such stillness and

openness

and restlessness –

the quiet world unfolding in his garden;

an ordinary miracle that needs a different eye to see it,

a new tilt of the head, or sudden mood of

equanimity that allows leaves to rustle,

branches to brush the lawn,

a bird to move discretely and even

try out some autumnal singing –

 

each thing

sifting into

place,

judged   or

unjudged:

until an apple simply

falls –

a muscular movement of energy,

and chance –

and a new constellation of elements

spins

shimmering

into view.

 

 Woolsthorpe Manor, Lincolnshire. ©Pauline Brightling, 2011.

(1)^†

 

The little thickets were the only place to get to.

The absence of the sea

 

Set a white, extravagant quiet.

I awaited the great beauty of the gorse—

 

Simmering, perfumed,

Ringing the snares with its unction.

 

It was intent, like torture.

Its dead black spikes

 

Made a hole in nothing.

And its flowers tasted like vacancy.

 

(2)^††

 

It was an ancient twist of the tripwire set me bleeding.

Clamped in the copper gleam of a human contrivance

I wait, aghast, as an indolent fly

Trails the blade-edge of our drama.

‘Murderer!’ I cry, but my words do not

Translate beyond a tortured weeping.

 

Doomed to the Sunday stew-pot

I lie locked as you penetrate the gorse

Your blunt fingers riving snare after snare

From the innocent land, your unworldly

Exploration driving you to desecrate

The sanctity of this eyrie hollow—

 

Where my simmering entrails come fresh

Into your dybbuk hands.

Anticipation of spring is like the flopsy fingers

left to mischief,

fantasy that folds our time.

 

This cut weather.

We rest on pillows amidst a flurry of bird wars – a

channel-billed cuckoo, that itinerant other

is hunting for a magpies’ ruin their

eggs supplanted by size & rancour. But

we people belong, don’t we? Turning poems. Immobility

& its dainty flowers,

wealthy in sequester.

 

For me, hurry would be surrender,

smokehouse resistance

will wash away the foundation

that June built with such bluster.

Victory is certain

so we snuggle

in tinder.

5 am still dark motorbike dew

night’s nectar no one awake

 

speed sheer round curves

mangroves to the right

 

limestone on the left

stretching north enigma

 

questions the opal air

eyes hungry for light

 

hide in excess of orchids

trespass the garden

 

hope no one hears

reach shore of content

 

hint of breeze furrows

the water with tropic code

 

here I sink into sand

dawn front row seat

 

sunrise of the secret

this time revealed or not

Your torso parked against a salmon gum.

 

Or, you as a terrified hero-horse, chest

ground against the earth.

 

You made by fat, drastic thumbs;

and a squiff of zinc for your fag-end.

 

Now you’re a bastard

you might as well dress like one

and eat the meat that bastards eat.

 

The distended spider hanging

from a mosquito coast; its network of tails.

 

The bear at the centre of the colosseum.

 

You as teal-coloured, graven

with signs of delta: whiplash, eel and parvenu.

 

The cup with two saucers.

 

Your shin as a root that rests

while the body walks on.

 

You as a hull fading into view.

 

Planed by the rush, sockets thrown,

your face coming away in my hands

like an anchor.

 

Falling through streets—pausing

to lick the page, wake

muffled in the crotch of a long gaze.

for Richard Tipping

 

Inhabiting this

art

 

we’re not seated

on a carved chair

regarding

through glass

 

the sharked

polluted

eternal

ocean —

 

We’re the flensing edge

of any of a hundred

newly risen

teeth

 

We’re the cornea

of a boy bodysurfing

beside an

outlet pipe

 

We’re a blackened plank

floating around soaked

A message

without a bottle

‘It is an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged.’ – Silent Spring

 

lost, Rachel Louise Carson

squinched a face of fish

a young woman          the other

day asked

me          are there any

states in America

that have

a Maccas?                 yo

 

I hear bagpipes? [convincingly

pulling off a Utah]

I asked

yes

she grilled          tattooed out upon the oval

tomato of a dusk

 

the outside tenor drone

the both of us

agitants          our sudds of spit

speedometres of what’s bitesize

a Christmastime             of pesticide

I’m watching you, a blur of wings

And legs, floating around me —

I’m trying to brush you away,

Or grab and squash you.

 

Suddenly I see you’re on my hand,

Walking up my middle finger,

Testing with your feet, waving

Your proboscis thoughtfully.

 

I let you go on to find your spot —

A small sharp pain, and then

You’re sucking, white-banded rear legs

Held over your back.

 

Your transparent, black-striped body

Pulses, it seems to take forever

Until a dark finger of blood creeps

Along inside you.

 

You bloat, abdomen red now,

But once detached, you whiffle about,

Take two steps, as if to start

Feeding again.

 

No! You don’t need any more,

I don’t think you can fly! I puff

You away and you disappear across

Autumn garden-beds.

vestiunt lanae: mihi parva rura et
spiritum Graiae tenuem Carmenae
Parca non mendax dedit et malignum
            spernere vulgus.

But I am rich too: Fate, an honest patron,
Has given me a small farm, an ear fine-tuned
To the Grecian Muses, and a mind from vulgar
            Envy aloof.
                        – Horace, Odes, II.16

 

1

 

all of the trails brought me now vanish

the gate grows over

…lost to the world

 

then let’s make clear the play position –

I only desire to afford to be poor

I do not pretend that is not to desire

 

here heaven is with me

how else to imagine?

there’s still the odd delivery

the elsewhere seeping like a stain

 

hear the road, that it hums and grumbles

the pigment takes

 

if the lines can come

innocence will shape our soil

 

all that we need is fashioned for us

 

what does a magpie know about rain?

 

 

2

 

read in that light omens suggest

my tenure as fallible as the rest

this is the place to park

 

true, echoes from nowhere

come hammering home

 

the world is a market

no way not to play

 

but the world is many things besides

some of those biting are bit

 

 

3

 

here on my own growing gates

tending fences, commending their collapse

 

shrunk daily in circumference

one should acknowledge mastery

 

among sunfall and foliage

loathed and admired

is it not I who make

the landscape looking?

 

I am the field here

cattle numb in

 

rain is waiting

for thirst to be spoke

taps on my shoulder home

 

 

4

 

dawn again

this last

bright irony of the condemned

 

you see how the light is cast

lacks attention

 

the day grows over

everything done

vanity, vanities

 

out there the wall all window

you walk through it

were meant to

it’s in the bones

 

ramshackle lines

knot me

 

now living in the longed for time

breathing sculpture I am

the weeds pull round

 

 

5

 

all day today

my footsteps after

out of breath

 

sky is a wing

folded out over

the reckless stretch of facts wed to

sore distraction

 

some nights the anaesthetic wears through

you see what you’ve made

weep, laugh

 

 

6

 

gentle at strings and by all airs

 

you dizzying

the gospel of less

none left to preach

 

here goes though

 

best rule

simplest

easiest first

pick the windfall

before tugging

unless of course

limbs want a stretch

 

take out the errant weed alone

and leave the clump till last

 

arms with the barrow as low as they’ll go

 

7

 

I am more in it

by day the passages

and through dream light

 

myself entailed in

absence of action

the big told-you-so

voices in ether

their knowing untold

 

console the self with

what they cannot take

by sword, by fire

 

see how the storm’s hung our antenna

 

and deliver us from mail

as we who pen to paper impose

such willing distillations

a world

 

 

8

 

dive in

the screen is all deeps

 

spit into the vast

no disrespect

 

it’s all assumption I intuit

here beyond the rubbing out

 

what mannered vehemence

 

a breeze sets to paper

day fades the signs

or hollows damp

the pages where they’re hid for good

 

now ways of saying

edge the said

 

obscurity is something built

of accidents, the lucky breaks

 

9

 

I’m shaping the ruins

my own trackless waste

 

let me my work

the guess of chores

to comfort

to the point of fate

 

my own affects

to lounge about

I’ll swim the given sea

 

such wild iconic waves toss off

as mutual in admiration

 

 

10

 

let there be also

lacking effects

passing unnoticed

 

let lack itself

set free

not be my hairshirt

but victory

all of my kind

 

Saint Epicurus, here’s my candle

it gutters, there’s proof enough devotion

 

 

 

11

 

in absentia

hoarding provisions

plots and fictions

 

one vague sadness washes me

the all I ever wanted of childhood

crowds now

matter of fact

 

not remembering what’s to want

even where the ways are lost

 

something sweet for my retinue

the provinces are led away

they as I legion

 

in differences

made little as possible

made to mean

 

 

12

 

sooner or later

they give me a job

 

teaching ahead of myself a road

as if nothing were known

 

o that it might be

 

we took the slow coast

framing tar

 

the long and the short

of all considered

 

forgotten in

a flimsy persistence

that laboured failing of words

where paws

have gone before

 

Christopher (Kit) Kelen is an Australian poet, scholar and visual artist, and Professor of English at the University of Macau, where he has taught Creative Writing and Literature for the last fourteen years. The most recent of Kit Kelen’s dozen English language poetry books is China Years – New and Selected Poems. ‘minor manifesto’ appears in the just out Scavengers Season (Puncher and Wattman).

My Lord, God knows I am your loyal vassal

no word has reached us and our plight

has deepened, the sally gate has fallen.

 

Wombat sappers under the cover of black cockatoos

(We could see nothing in the moonless night)

advance relentlessly, undermining all in their path.

 

As though blind to all consequence, swooping acrobats

of sworn enemies are united in pursuit of the turrets;

plummeting as lightning shuttlecocks.

 

Ashen faced cuckoo shrikes echo our betraying steps

reveal our position to lolling parrot corsairs,

squeaking conceits are all about us.

 

The mopokes allow us no sleep, keep time

for the nocturnal barrage of kookaburra flak

in banging fusillades shaking us to the bones.

 

We are invested, mountain ash

drain the slurry moat the watch tower tumbles,

in the citadel yard my best were as mill barley.

 

No quarter left to give, the stairway swept

war painted wallabies advance no longer garrulous,

echidna scribes work the last door in sigilic rhyme.

 

No message is out of the demesne, owls shred

our weasel words to snow on tree ferns refracting,

the sentinel trapeze fronds impenetrable.

 

All hope weary traveller has left us, our journey spent

in the drunkenness of oil and the snuff of coal,

we were consumed in temporal amnesia.

It begins in water, the human spirit. It lingers amid fresh green floating weeds, until the time comes when it must re-enter the world.
Rusty Peters, artist and Gija man.

 

From behind glass

in a train, travelling

blind and articulated as a worm

I caught its shimmer.

A brush dipped in cobalt

has painted new grass

earth-set roots wander in water

a lustrous green and blue oval

its edges vague as twilight.

The trees wade like skinny school kids

one with a hoard of blue-winged kookaburras

in the crook of her arm

all beaks and crests

 

so that I hover at the water’s edge

like a dragonfly with its wings in wide arcs

transparent with hunger.

 

Elysian underworld, the fragrant surface,

the near heavens are clouded with feathers,

that mingle each time a jabiru

digging for file snakes or eels

strides alone through clear pools

his pronged toes in wet earth

and his glossed green-black wings

flap-fill the sky.

 

The billabong

shimmies, thickening with flying

floating, creeping

 

saratoga and long-necked turtles nose

among sunken pandanas roots

their ancestors are drawn in ochre

and x-ray on cave walls.

Organs and dry season fat on the inner eye.

Magpie-geese steer hatchlings from rush cups

through paddling-fields of wild rice

a river-dwelling ray skims the shallows.

 

It waxes, all of it, white and pink lily flowers

red claw, prawn, the trilling of bee-eaters

jacanas with their long toes on point

making glissades across green pads.

 

And the billabong will wane, regular as the moon

(all of it)

 

or the human body

tucked tight as a joey

until it swells wide and roo-tall

until it curls small as death.

 

Seeds of life and lotus

will be locked in a dim hard earth

 

The dry, Gurrung, licks up blue flow

that hole is where the spirits in this underland

linger, and they dream of Gudjewg,

the season wet with green floating weeds.

the clang of the chain

a modern cow can produce

ten thousand litres a year now

 

how to remain in over-

work wingtip formation

surfing the up-wash of the bird in front

flap choreographed precisely to get where he’s going

circuiting sulphur blue moons

 

high costs in a chilling collapse of compassion

species are falling in absolute ways

all we’ve spent    undoing

 

earn      a burn-out    score

eventually

learn in return

an oversized teddy ramification

drawing the essence of the map

stare out the window    all the way shaking

the swing structure up and flipping

it over to get

to the shopping board

where the sewer-market snake head snaps

and even as you cut

it’s biting you back

lantana, eucalypts, stept

from a shell on the shore of the sea

pacific and awake

to nothing.

 

I was born with small birds in my eyes,

hair of sticks, leaves of sand

paper coarse and wild on the edge

a single lawn, a grove in the mountains.

 

Sacred place, elided and eroded

erased.

 

I emerged from bamboo

I enter bamboo groves, a forest-copse

semi-seen.

 

I am the silvereyes and coucal pheasants

never remembered

 

a fox on the beach carefully eating eggs.