PART ONE

And the length and breadth of those summers
the back of them
fading into a blank-stare distance
towards nothing remotely on the horizon
the horizon itself a vanished thing
its whirlpools of heat its wash of haze
cotton thread clouds unravelling and the light
in a bare-faced sky drifting towards an abyss
an edge that the eye cannot see
the last long rays of sunlight in the grass
stalling the innocent and patient stars
once again he says you’ve come here
this place of perdurable memory
place of silences
sounding
of water soughing over rocks
of reeds returning the purl and lap of water
down to the last trickle
rock water reed
each remaining calmly within the confines of its own nature
leaving the scrawl of their signature
on creek beds on windrows on sandy stretches
holding out for the slake and quench
of trunk bole branch leaf
shade
and within and around these surface tensions
on the branches of enduring trees
birds swing or swoop off
shedding their wings on boxwood
ghost gum Norfolk Island pine
asking nothing of the going down
evening
of the coming on night
attuned only to what has already been granted
and the day with its last calico gleam
lingers
thinking about it
the cobweb of its hours clinging like a promise to what
it can’t remembering promising
something more tenuous than a hope
that this night may for once be prevailed upon
to keep at bay
despair’s onset
the only thing that makes hope possible


§

a year five years ten perhaps
and the ivy runs wild over the wall
the hard cold ground grows harder
colder than ever
and the heart once a seat of animal radiance
is now tongue-tied like a child’s first confession
and the soul’s is only a reflected light
all cast and filigree of leadlight
of iron and half-life
the road has vanished into a tangle of wrong turns
and only the poplars swaying
in the wash up of the road
retain a sense of their place and métier
understand the order of things
and looking at it for long enough
you take a leaf out of their book
the book of the winds
turn the pages of the horizon one by one
or flick back
and find to your surprise to your dismay
the fable of your own life
how everything in it
is in the gun sights of the hunter
time
and the length of the tale like those summers
those blank-faced winters
hangs upon what lies between the lines
what is heard not as a sound but only as an echo
of something soundless
like the terpsichore of the clouds
and of where or when they may tell you
but nothing of why
somewhere nowhere
never
the unknown
the murmur
inland
once remembered as a fog horn on the shore
of a shipwreck coast
a place beyond what it used to be called
before it lay beyond reach of what they call it now
this fetch of scrub this fosse of creek
bulrush and boulder country
a scree of endless scrub
the black stump’s last resting place
now an eyrie of the wind where the flat sweeps
pick up the raging static of the constellations
and the mullet-faced moon is left speechless
in a fugitive sky