- Free Article: No
- Contents Category: Peter Porter Poetry Prize
- Review Article: Yes
- Article Title: Mallee
- Online Only: No
- Custom Highlight Text:
I. Claim
Wild birds rise before us, making the noise of a multitude clapping hands.
The men fire, fire again and still they rise, they rise clear out of range and
where they were they leave such wakes of light, they are tearing the blue-black
shadows out of the river; their wing tumult is shadows escaping air. Act
flung back to motives, they arc away from us and scatter till I am fierce
for what I cannot remember and still they rise, the vault is dark with their applause.
II. Selection
Wall made of mallee root:
it stands – though there is just
house enough for air to be
furtive, for corner piss-stench and
danked fires.
Dust chafes the citrus, rusted vine.
Tourists of forlorn, we stay
lee-side of what worked this
out of Acres of future, scrub
to wreak days in, decades cleared
with fire and an axe.
Selection, heft burl by burl to the fact.
Only, to sleep one night
at your survey peg in the patient
material of all your profit
(already your fire is fast hands
buying up the dark)
while plovers call in your latent paddocks
and further off you hear a mopoke owl
calling up the quiet.
III. Possession
On the side verandah Mrs.– takes another slice of
letting herself go. Flyscreens make the kindest shade.
They are all gone to history. Paddocks walk about the house.
The house is still in the family. Memory is
small-handed creatures, they unravel shadows down
corridors, in drifting rooms. A neighbour calls at the door.
How politely it comes in! the future,
padding across the boards in soft-soled shoes
till her armchair presides over dunes and swales.
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