Post by Wayne Hall on Sept 9, 2022 4:56:23 GMT -5
An end and a beginning
These two poems are the only ones I ever wrote which today I consider in any way worth keeping, even for my own eyes. The red lights in the first poem are the tail lights of my first girlfriend's car, seen from the front of my house at 58 Gladstone Street Lilyfield in Sydney as she drove away along Railway Parade back to her parents' home in Beecroft, Sydney.
1.
Red lights heading north at three o'clock,
Dishevelled shivers, slack and moist with drying love,
Fast-fading remnants, snatched from newfound warmth,
Cold, chilling colder with the tinkle and the turning in the lock.
Passing people sleeping, blinking light,
Polite and homely, greeting warmly from the fire
A tiny table set for two with china cups
Hot coffee waiting on the coming from the coldness of the night.
Home, the soothing comfort seeping up,
A mother spreading out a well-worn cotton cloth
In womb-warm welcome, with a mother's jealous love.
There comes a time one has to crush a china cup.
2.
This second poem dates from the day of the 1972 Federal election in Australia that voted in the Labor government of Gough Whitlam. The yellow beam is from a reading light in the Overland night train from Adelaide to Melbourne. Dr. K is Dr. Frank Knopfelmacher, with whom, briefly, I had hopes of doing postgraduate studies at the University of Melbourne.
I might add that the reforms of the 1972-75 Whitlam Labor government are seen from a diametrically opposite perspective by the majority of my fellow-activists in the 2020s. Dr. Knopfelmacher, by contrast, is simply forgotten.
Listen to what I have to say, Dr. K.
I spent a night ill at ease under a yellow beam.
I watched the usual endless stream of endless trees in the half-light.
Quite a way, Dr. K.
The city woke up nervous
The buildings sprouted arms to greet the day
On the premises of public schools
The nation votes, the demos rules,
The government falls.
Do you remember the way it happened before,
With your wife on the floor,
As the telephone rang,
And the police paid a visit
And kicked in the door?
Listen, there's something you've simply got to see.
Listen to me.
Today's the beginning, not the end.
It's all beginning today.
You've washed your hands of the NCC.
You sneer at Helms and the CIA.
You've thrown off the rope, the USA
Is quite beyond hope.
Still you mope.
Get out of the way
Dr. K!
These two poems are the only ones I ever wrote which today I consider in any way worth keeping, even for my own eyes. The red lights in the first poem are the tail lights of my first girlfriend's car, seen from the front of my house at 58 Gladstone Street Lilyfield in Sydney as she drove away along Railway Parade back to her parents' home in Beecroft, Sydney.
1.
Red lights heading north at three o'clock,
Dishevelled shivers, slack and moist with drying love,
Fast-fading remnants, snatched from newfound warmth,
Cold, chilling colder with the tinkle and the turning in the lock.
Passing people sleeping, blinking light,
Polite and homely, greeting warmly from the fire
A tiny table set for two with china cups
Hot coffee waiting on the coming from the coldness of the night.
Home, the soothing comfort seeping up,
A mother spreading out a well-worn cotton cloth
In womb-warm welcome, with a mother's jealous love.
There comes a time one has to crush a china cup.
2.
This second poem dates from the day of the 1972 Federal election in Australia that voted in the Labor government of Gough Whitlam. The yellow beam is from a reading light in the Overland night train from Adelaide to Melbourne. Dr. K is Dr. Frank Knopfelmacher, with whom, briefly, I had hopes of doing postgraduate studies at the University of Melbourne.
I might add that the reforms of the 1972-75 Whitlam Labor government are seen from a diametrically opposite perspective by the majority of my fellow-activists in the 2020s. Dr. Knopfelmacher, by contrast, is simply forgotten.
Listen to what I have to say, Dr. K.
I spent a night ill at ease under a yellow beam.
I watched the usual endless stream of endless trees in the half-light.
Quite a way, Dr. K.
The city woke up nervous
The buildings sprouted arms to greet the day
On the premises of public schools
The nation votes, the demos rules,
The government falls.
Do you remember the way it happened before,
With your wife on the floor,
As the telephone rang,
And the police paid a visit
And kicked in the door?
Listen, there's something you've simply got to see.
Listen to me.
Today's the beginning, not the end.
It's all beginning today.
You've washed your hands of the NCC.
You sneer at Helms and the CIA.
You've thrown off the rope, the USA
Is quite beyond hope.
Still you mope.
Get out of the way
Dr. K!