There was plenty of Him that flowed
into his hand, like standing
under a tree and having apples
hanging to your mouth.

It
was a different matter near the equator;
he was going home; they
were going away.
His mind was large with the possibilities
and all the unreal frustration that lies hidden
in the banal phrasing of a waltz;
it strayed outside
where the darkness obstinately refused
to produce a moon.

He could feel his coat jutting
into the half-reality of a dream world;
he had waited for this, as time stretched
out blank, waiting for his impression.

The other shapes were not imagined.

It
was a stiff winter falling into his hand
like a pear not yet ripe;
trees moved in a flux of moving things,
like experience, fused.
This was his part now, to withstand
the ebb and flow of seasons,
the sullen hostility of rock,
all those passions that sweep down,
lapsed into distance and the moving
rain.

Stuart Cooke

Stuart Cooke's latest book is George Dyuŋgayan's Bulu Line: A West Kimberley Songcycle (2014). All the text is from Happy Valley by Patrick White (1939).