One lovely thing about poetry is the way lines will pop into your head years after you’ve read them. When I worked at The School Magazine we’d receive a letter or phone call every month or so from someone trying to locate the source of a line of poetry, or even sometimes the author of a whole poem remembered verbatim. It was gratifying to be able to help most of the time.
The first line from James Macauley’s short poem ‘Magpie‘ often pops into my head when I hear a magpie singing. The smell of earth after rain makes me think of Les Murray’s Monthly article ‘Infinite Anthology‘ (not his poem by the same name – I looked them both up); and of a line from George Herbert’s poem ‘The Flower‘ likewise makes itself known when the sky clears after rain. Today’s stanza steals from all three, plus a bonus word from Macbeth.
November verse 11: On hearing a magpie after rain
The magpie's mood is never surly,
never glum is petrichor.
My first line comes from James McAuley –
took time out from culture wars
to sing the praise of liquid squabbles.
Line two: Les A Murray's bauble
lent to us from his great hoard
when he was in non-surly mood.
For when the hurlyburly's over,
when the mud has all been slung
and all the war songs have been sung,
the bees still bumble in the clover,
once more we smell the dew and rain
and relish verses once again.
US radio journalist Robert Krulwich recently asked nonagenarian biologist E O Wilson, ‘Will we solve the crises of the next 100 years?’
Wilson said, ‘Yes, if we are honest and smart.’
November verse 10: The chances
'We have a good chance of survival
if we're honest, if we're smart.'
But look who's at our leaders' table:
quick of tongue and hard of heart,
they'll risk the world to win election,
lie, deny, lack all conviction,
build their bubbles, shift the blame,
play the man and work the game.
The psalm says not to trust in princes.
Who is smart and tells the truth?
By any measure, it's the youth
who strike, speak out, and pull no punches.
Young, you say, naïve and green!
Well, Jeanne d'Arc burned at just nineteen.
I reminded myself that when I dreamed up this notion of writing fourteen 14-line poems in November, my intention was to have at least some of the poems wrangle events from my daily life into the stanza form that I seem to have fallen enduringly in love with. So here’s one about this morning’s walk. In case explanation is needed: the BOM is the Bureau of Meteorology.
November verse 9: Our morning walk
A cool spring day, and rain's predicted.
Undeterred, our morning walk,
by Covid rules now unrestricted,
took place just on eight o'clock.
We left our raincoats and umbrellas
in the car. The croquet fellers
played in t-shirts on their green
and clouds were few and far between.
Happy flitting wagtails, peewees,
happy dogs who strain on leads
to sniff whatever's in the weeds,
happy walkers, far from freeways.
Day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
the BOM can't always get it right.
See this post for a brief description of my 500 People challenge.
This has been the second week of the Sydney Film Festival, at one session of which I found myself seated next to the chap from encounter Nº 14 in my last post in this series (link here). We took up our conversation where we’d left off. But there were more new encounters, most of them fleeting.
1. Saturday night 13 November, in a rare nighttime outing, we had another pleasant conversation with another Sydney Film Festival-goer. She and her partner had choctops, the first time in many months she said, and regretted it instantly. We had one film in common – Quo Vadis, Aida?, which we all loved – but in general they had been a lot less lucky than we had in their choice of movies.
2–4. Thursday, I was in our local pool with Ruby. A swimming class was in full swing in the other half of the small pool. A little girl came from the class to play in our area with a woman who was clearly her grandmother. There were only four of us in this part of the pool. I said, by way of an invitation to chat, ‘It’s hard work, but we seem to be managing.’ She accepted the invitation with something equally inane. But the little girl seized the opportunity: she told me her name (A–), her age (four and a half), her pets’ names, where her mother was (at home), and quite a lot more. Her best line was, “I’ve just been in the swimming class, and now I can swim.’ Her grandmother, sensing that Ruby was feeling sidelined, eventually broke into the conversation. We agreed that A– liked to chat, and that it was a good thing there were no skeletons in the family closet. A little later the Emerging Artist joined us, and our two groups reconnected when the other grandmother called the EA by name: they knew each other from a long way back, and it’s true you can’t take the EA anywhere without somebody knowing her (I’m thinking of museums in Manhattan and Istanbul, for example). Anyhow, the third encounter in this batch was with A–’s grandfather, who had been walking around the perimeter of the pool. When I got out, he was supervising A– in the shallow pool. I tried the same opening that had worked so well with his wife, ‘Hard work but we seem to be managing.’ He looked at me as if I was slightly daft and slightly annoying – but I’m including him anyhow.
5. During the same swim on Thursday, when the swimming class was over, a lane of the small pool was roped off and a woman who used a wheel chair was helped into that lane by two other women. With great difficulty, they helped her walk the length of the pool, and then to float and kick. They spoke in what I took to be Vietnamese, and the woman who was being helped – perhaps she’d had a stroke – made quite a lot of nonverbal noise, as well as speaking very softly to her companions. Ruby was fascinated. I was reminded of Andy Jackson’s poem ‘The Change Room’ as I tried to answer her questions. The best I could manage was to make eye contact with the woman: she gave me and Ruby the V sign, and managed a smile.
Running total is 252. I’ve passed the halfway mark.
My eighth November verse this year is a response to the Auburn Poets Challenge #35, which invites all comers to submit a poem using five prescribed words – wing, copper, acorn, string, infinite.
November verse 8: Primary school, North Queensland, 1950s
'The tallest oak was once an acorn.'
'What's an acorn? What's an oak?'
Outside the class, rainforest staghorns,
frangipani, figs that choke
their weaker neighbours, mangrove breathers
went unnoticed by our teachers.
All things European stood
for all things real, and all things good.
Like coppers' verbals, MPs' lying,
what religions give to youth
as infinite eternal truth,
these lessons sent the real world flying
kite-like, on such distant wings
that we could barely hold its string.
I searched on my father’s surname (Shaw) and my mother’s pre-marriage surname (Aitkin) on Trove. Only two items showed up: an account of their wedding, which was pretty much a description of the wedding dress and veil with the wedding as vague context, and the short piece below, which inspired today’s stanza. Esme, then 18 years old, was to marry my father two years later.
The third last line refers to a common observation of the time that Innisfail was the most cosmopolitan town in Australia, as in this item in The News (Adelaide) in January 1934.
November verse 7: Misses Aitkin EntertainJohnstone River Advocate and Innisfail News, 8 August 1933
On page two, thirty Misses gather,
plus one Matron, three Mesdames.
The Misses Aitkin, helped by mother,
play joint hostess to the games.
BRIDGE AFTERNOON, there in the rest room,
safe from work and men: asylum.
Highest score wins, not a purse,
but linen hankies, white of course.
Antigonon adorns the tables,
pinker than each player's cheeks.
On other pages, murder, strikes,
and conversation rich as Babel.
This room's genteel, all-English, safe,
a place we know well, sunlit cave.
I don’t know if this is a thing, but I thought it would be interesting to see what I got if I made a poem from the words seen on a morning walk. I took photos, not of every word – I deliberately left out proper names and words on number plates. I didn’t include here every word I snapped in the resulting poem – that is to say, this is a curated list. But the words here are strictly in order of my meeting them.
The walk to King Street, Newtown
School Zone
_______ROKES
Caution: Vehicles reversing
_______Sneak
Single day bed mattress in good condition
_______PRISMO SKU ACAB FTP
_____e
_____a
_____r
_____s
WARNING: Automatic Moving Device.
___Do not extend
___limbs or objects
___through or between
___spaces in this
___door or gate
To report faulty sign operation please phone
_______TEEGEE
Destroy the patriarchy not the planet
Eating animals is bad karma
_______ASPIRE
Energy
_______One man's trash
Comingled recycling
We'll avenge all our imprisoned siblings
Save our coral reef
_______Homeys
Main switchboard & electrical meters located within
All power to the people
Live free
_______Crisp
Have hope
Fin
About line 6: I know that ACAB stands for ‘All Cops are Bastards’ and FTP stands for ‘Fight the Power’. If you know what PRISMO and SKU stand for, feel free to enlighten me in the comments.
About line 24: That’s the actual spelling on the skip, not a transcription error on my part.
I don’t think this one needs any explanation, but just in case you really haven’t been paying attention, or are reading this far into my future, here’s a link.
November verse 5: After the COP
Now the COP is done and dusted,
should we kiss our bums goodbye?
The weak goals are already rusted,
weasel words from men of high
position: coal is for down-phasing,
future tech will be amazing.
Leaders now aren't tragic Lears,
but – deadly farce – white marketeers
who think no further than tomorrow.
Worst, there is none. Three degrees
seems certain if we trust in these.
But could some Second Coming sorrow
rouse us from our stony sleep
or are they right who call us sheep?
See this post for a brief description of my 500 People challenge.
This has been the second week of the Sydney Film Festival, at one session of which I found myself seated next to the chap from encounter Nº 14 in my last post in this series (link here). We took up our conversation where we’d left off. But there were more new encounters, most of them fleeting.
1. Sunday morning 7 November, we came across a ‘cupboard house’ in the park near our place. Someone has created this prototype shelter for a homeless person from a discarded cupboard, put it up in our park and asked for feedback on Insta at old.butstillgood. We were admiring it when another person arrived, ready for a chat. Once we’d negotiated the awkward ideological difference – he said, ‘There aren’t any homeless really,’ a comment which we ignored – we admired the handiwork, opened the cupboard door together, and commented on basic bedding inside. We swapped news about the shameful amount of old furniture going to waste, and also about what each of us had noticed about homeless people who live in the park and their complex relationships to authority.
Photo by Penny Ryan
2. Tuesday. During the Sydney Film Festival, the Emerging Artist and I are making sure we get some exercise by walking to most of our films – abut a 90 minute walk when the movie is on in the city. On this morning, a little before 9 am, we met a woman carrying a small child – school age, but no older than seven – pietà-like, except that the child was struggling and the woman was doing her best to run. As she approached us she was saying to the child, ‘If you knock me over we’ll be late.’ She then noticed us, and we must have both looked we’ve-been-there friendly. She rolled her eyes in mock despair, or maybe real but good-natured despair, and hurried on her way.
3. Friday morning, I met the young man who had constructed the cupboard house we saw on Monday. He was taking it apart in the yard of a block of flats near the park. It turned out that the Council had emailed instructing him to remove it, he had wheeled it to this small concrete yard, where it had attracted the indignant attention of the landlord who demanded its immediate removal. As it happened, someone was sleeping in it at the time and rain was pouring down, so he – the creator – insisted on waiting until this morning to remove it. He said that someone had slept in it every night it was in the park, and that a small group of uni students had used it as a drinking and smoking room, burning a hole in the tarp while the homeless man was outside. I made generally sympathetic noises: he has no illusions that his little project is a solution to homelessness, but it has provided shelter to one man for several nights, and may have some kind of future.
4. Again on Friday morning, back in the sauna, where before the last lockdown there was a limit of three people at a time, now the limit is two. When I arrived there was one other man there. I said, ‘You have to be lucky with your timing these days.’ Neither of us was keen for a proper conversation, but we agreed that it was odd that the limit had been decreased, speculated on the reasons and agreed that the regulation was likely to be ignored anyhow. A little later, a third man joined us. All three of us sat in total silence for about 90 seconds, and hen the left. ‘Typical,’ my new friend said. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘no stamina.’ ‘And no regard for the rules,’ he said. And we went back into our separate sweatinesses.
5. Saturday, again on our way to the Film Festival, we stopped for breakfast at Zenius, a little cafe in Chippendale. It’s a rare treat for us to have breakfast out, especially in Covid times, and we both breakfasts were excellent – an avo and mash and a granola with fruit pieces.Our host/waiter was a bit taken aback by the enthusiastic praise we heaped on him and his cook. He asked if we lived nearby, and we responded that sadly no, we were just passing through, walking to town from Marrickville.
The découpé, or more prosaically the cut-up and remix, is pretty much self-explanatory. According to Wikipedia, it’s ‘an aleatory literary technique in which a written text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text’. It was invented by Dadaist Tristan Zara who drew words out of a hat. William S. Boroughs Junior made it his own by cutting and folding pages of text (a fact that explains the incomprehensibility of the only Burroughs novel I’ve read). Boroughs evidently saw T S Eliot’s The Wasteland as a precursor to the technique.
I baulk at aleatory (that is, determined by the throw of a dice), so here is a découpé from a story on today’s front page. I printed out the article, cut up the first column, drew words and phrases out of a bowl, then did a little fiddling. I didn’t add any words and if any dropped out it was by accident.
Découpé: I want to be a featistFrom Sydney Morning Herald 13 November 2021:'PM pushes business to lead charge on climate'
Before adopting the de-industrialists'
record of world history, I have confidence we can solve
other crises with the Herald and the investors
and the entrepreneurs and foreign leaders
who say, 'Mr Morrison will be very ruined.'
In the interview based on the
way next year's same scientists said to pitch
and the risk election responded
to change: 'Mr Morrison, the world will beat
climate activists I'm warned.'
'We'll all be sharpening against his regulation.'
He believes this and it has solved this.
Climate takers re-said that smart upbeat voters
supported much more by the track, by poll
and attitudes of featists.
Me fail? I fly! 