Wondermentalist

Simon Williams  performed at the January Wondermentalist and was a Dead Poet Slammer in the first, reading WS Graham’s Enter a Cloud.Here’s some poetry. We expect to have an mp3 soon…

 

Digging In

At the outbreak of December,

he stoked the fire up, got in the fuel,

later, set the flowers as best he could remember,

pulled up his chair; fed in a log for yule.

 

While through the window, ice made jewels

on the willow, fixed like static tears,

he baked a loaf, sliced before it cooled

and toasted on the poker to wassail New Year’s

 

seeded hope. He drank a summer-coloured beer

and read the history of a badger sanctuary,

first-footed when the aconites appeared

at the skirmished end of January.

 

Converse

‘The information will help us constrain the possibility

we could openly communicate with the ocean.”

                                                                        NASA Scientist

 

I asked the trawlerman if he could

openly communicate with the ocean.

“Nah,” he said, “I’d try and creep up

on it, slip its fish into my hold

and hope it didn’t notice. Way

too fond of shouting is that hothead sea.”

 

I asked the yachtswoman if she could

have a conversation with the ocean.

“No,” she said, “I sometimes say

a few words, sometimes the water

answers back, but rarely do the

two bear much relation.

 

I asked the space scientist if he had

thought about open communication

of the type his data might constrain.

“There is a probability,” he said,

“that with the right equipment, the

correct deceleration window,

we might make contact.

 

I asked the ocean if it was

ready to enter into dialogue, to

shift its waves into a recognisable code,

to pour itself across the pebbles,

make them into common symbols I

could read and rearrange in answer.

“All you ever do is talk,” the ocean said.

  THE SUBJECT OF THE BISHOP’S MIRACLE

I

FIRST get out the map and look at the country.

 

Here the retractive turtles frustrate the foolish dogs

and the hot sun shines through the amber

translucent goannas that climb the brigalow

and the iron bark. Here the shower of crested

pigeons is shaken from the tumescent bottle-trees

and the butcher-bird turns the burden of the cedars

to a golden swarm of bells.

 

And here the swaying uncorseted emus gallop past

the prickly pear, and the prickly pear is a bright green

balancing feat of flabby paws

displaying their sure geometry of spines

and the small magenta pear;

and the innocent gecko causes argument

about his power of colour change.

 

And here the huge red peering cattle and the sunflowers

make a brittle wilderness of eyes; and the ibis

and the plump cormorant perch in the grey plumbing

of the crooked pandanus that reaches out

toward the steep green islands

and the clear deep pools, kaleidoscopes

for boughs of coral and the aniline fish.

 

II

 

Now observe the inset in the corner.

 

This is the city of toy trains and the library full of tomcats,

and the big bright petals falling from the trees

into the eyes of the people are lottery tickets.

 

This is the city. Do you hear the weeping figs and the arrogant cock-

            roaches

and the church-bells thudding peg leg down the long streets?

This is the city. Can you taste the hardness of the water

and the yellow goodness of the beer? This is the prison and the

            carnival.

 

The city has its river. True, there are sewage outfalls,

but also bridges and barges and the pieces of green bank.

And here by the river is a high room,

finite, without spiders.

 

III

 

There is no brandy left in the high room,

but she is there, she whom I love and hate.

This is she, the dreamer of the double dream,

the subject of the bishop’s miracle.

 

Do you observe her eyes

and the broken land behind?