The Gull

Riding the wind, in planetary sweep,
The gull wheels on the radius of a wing.
Ocean and air, concourse of height and deep
Acclaim the exultant orbit of their King.

Precise he lands, defter than any dancer,
Red legs, red eye, white body whiter than foam,
No loveliest yacht so light to lean and answer,
No soul so white in its celestial home.

Oh Attic joy! Oh grace made visible,
Beauty and power embodied into bird!
Malice or truth – which is it pricks your spell
With sarcasm of the loathsome and absurd?

Those lacquered feathers, sleek to wind and wave
Or downy to the softly fingering breeze
Are an infested jungle, a living grave,
The haunt of lice, mites, parasites, and fleas.

Filth feeds that savage beauty, when head, beak, eyes
Plunge in the putrid whale, or, harsh as sin,
Are stretched agape, with cannibalistic cries,
To tear the wounded body of his kin.

Beauty born of death, to death returning,
You are our Middle Earth, nor Heaven nor Hell,
You are ourselves, our turning globe still turning,
The fractured light in which we have to dwell.

Here truth is ever tangent. Therefore, gull,
Gorged with the stinking offal that you eat
Rise in the light, infested, beautiful,
In fragmentary loveliness complete.

Penelope’s Choice

  • Ballade of Suburbia

    I’ve never killed a Marquis in a fight,
    Nor led a lovely lady’s feet astray

  • Forestry

    My love and I in all agree
       As one, save this thing only:

  • Colours

    Before I loved or knew you were
       I spoke as I had eyes,

  • Alone

    Alone to walk the dripping woods of spring
       While daisies spy you?

  • Milton Blind

    That dreaming day it was, the bell-like air
    Unclosed the naked admirable heaven,

  • The Tunnel

    This is where the water hurries under the archway,
    This is where we enter the long tunnel,

  • Australia 1914

    Gone away, away,
    Suddenly at a word departed,

  • Come Death Suddenly

    Come death suddenly from the sea or cloud,
    With the blast of thunder and the blinding shroud,

  • The Tactician

    Spring held her fire
    So long, the long pursuit, the watchers wondered
    Would there be ever an end

  • To J.S. Bach

    Now, when the smoking ruins smoulder low
    Of what was Europe once

  • Surmise

    My little son, whose face I never saw,
    Who could not wait to bless your father ’s eyes

  • Coming into the Clyde

    Part of me for ever is the January morning
    Coming into the Clyde in the frosty moonlight

  • The Jervis Bay

    ..The fifth day of November, Fifty North and Forty West,
    Was edging to its departure, like an undecided guest,

  • Punt Counter Punt

    Mid all these problems we’re confronting
    I come to sing the praise of punting! –

  • Flying to New Zealand

    Hauled headlong starward by the quadruple conviction
    Of lion-lunged engines in their pride of power

  • The Gull

    Riding the wind, in planetary sweep,
    The gull wheels on the radius of a wing.

  • Creation

    Straggling off the highway in search of firewood
    Past the tins and bottles, through the rusty wire,

  • Space Window

    Waylaid by Handel’s theme, I think of you
    Now half a world away, and hear you say
    ‘His music always seems like coming home.’

  • Rain after Drought

    Waking to a diapason in the downpipe
    I peer through curtained panes to a curtained sky

  • A Message to my Grandson

    You chose a marvellous morning to be born,
    The orange edge of dawn, the stars paling,

  • A Talk to the Willow

    When you were caught red-rooted in the drain
    You wept of course, but did the same again

  • Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto

    …Listening,
    I am bereft, lost in the mystery
    of music leaping quenchless, undefiled

  • The Honey Man

    Like liquid silk in golden eddies
    the honey laps into my tin.

  • Metamorphosis

    The young magpie, as large as either parent,
    Piteously pleads the pathos of his need.

  • Pause

    You are late coming home
    To the house we share
    An audible silence
    Chills the air

  • Splitting the Red Box

    The tree-trunk rounds, a fallen Doric column,
    are tumbled on the grass beside my gate.

  • Ballad of Old Sox

    They’re burning Old Sox’s shack
    Just two weeks since he died.

  • A Lambeth Garland

    A garden gracious, serene and spacious at Lambeth –
    This is the dream, the vision that shall be its crown

  • Banquet

    ..You they found fallen, holding a garden hose,
    Where, year on year, you watered, weeded, nurtured things to grow.

  • A Place of Meeting: Glimpses of a National Capital

    How name a capital city where kangaroos
    stare between leaves, past dome, construction cranes,

  • Anna-versary

    Anna is one
    What fun, what fun

  • Willow Tree: Two Years After    

    Spring, at a bound. Once more the colourful chorus,
    Daffodils first declare their lyric yellow,

  • Equal Rights for Emus

    Come down from that Crest! It’s Australia Day, Emu –
    We just want to say, mate, how much we esteem you.

  • Canberra Autumn

    Land of the singing light
    Light that first I saw
    Eighty years and more

  • Mousetrap

    With joyless spade I dig the tiny grave
    Asking, who made me lord of life or death?