Clouds

1. Inland

The rich surplus of consciousness rots at the wharves.

That one big bird will not preen his shallow shoulder

Nor peer at his ghost in water—there is none.

For the stooping gaffer daylight only serves

To bear in his muggy dungarees the moulder

Of mare’s-tail (or teacake) and that old boiled lolly the sun.

All assignations of brooding grain with earth,

All childhood, manhood among diehard trees

As litter of string, paper, and leather are wound

In the hot palms of the wind, sent thrumming forth

To whirl above shoaling plains and memories

And drum you, tissue of waters, out of mind.

2. The Town

The entrance to the Hall

Is two splayed marble calves

Propping a lap of stone.

Plumb in the centre of all

Itinerant hatreds, loves,

Is this mentor, but all alone.

Woolworths and Lyonses lean

All askew at twelve

(Time for a beer or tea)

And watch the flittering scene

Of scamper and gabble, delve

Into known asymmetry

For their children to buy and buy

Colours and tinny stars;

They are going too fast it seems.

No one looks at the sky

With all its department stores

Auctioning thuds and gleams

And greasy meccano cloud.

Oaths rattle in heaven,

Big fists clear away:

No one has heard a word,

No signals, omens even

In the town this day.

3. Airliner

I am become a shell of delicate alleys

Stored with the bruit of the motors, resolute thunders

And unflagging dances of the nerves.

Beneath me the sad giant frescoes of the clouds:

Towerings and defiles through intense grey valleys,

Huge faces of kings, queens, castles—travelling cinders,

And monuments, and shrouds.

A fortress crammed with engines of warfare swerves

As we bank into it, and all the giant sad past

Clutches at me swimming through it: here

Is faith crumbling—here the engines of war

In sleek word and sad fresco of print,

Landscapes broken apart; and here at last

Is home all undulant, banners hanging drear

Or collapsing into chaos, burnt.

And now we are through, and now a barbarous shore

Grimaces in welcome, showing all its teeth

And now the elder sea all wrinkled with love

Sways tipsily up to us, and now the swing

Of the bridge; houses, islands, and many blue bushlands come.

Confine me in Pinchgut, bury me beneath

The bones of the old lag, analyse me above

The city lest I drunkenly sing

Of wattles, wars, childhoods, being at last home.