The Assimilation of Background

Driving on that wide jute-coloured country

we came at last to the station,

its homestead with lawn and steel awnings

like a fortress against the sun.

And when we knocked, no people answered;

only a black dog came politely

and accompanied us round the verandahs

as we peered into rooms, and called brightly,

Anyone home? The billiard room,

shadowed dining room, gauze-tabled kitchen

gave no answer. Cricket bats, ancient

steamer trunks, the chugging coolroom engine

disregarded us. Only the dog’s very patient

claws ticked with us out of the gloom

to the grounds’ muffling dust, to the machine shed

black with oil and bolts, with the welder

mantis-like on its cylinder of clocks

and then to the stallion’s enclosure.

The great bay horse came up to the wire,

gold flares shifting on his muscles, and stood

as one ungelded in a thousand

of his race, but imprisoned for his sex,

a gene-transmitting engine, looking at us

gravely as a spirit, out between

his brain’s potent programmes. Then a heifer,

Durham-roan, but with Brahman hump and rings

around her eyes, came and stood among us

and a dressy goat in sable and brushed fawn

ogled us for offerings beyond

the news all had swiftly gathered from us

in silence, and could, it seemed, accept.

We had been received, and no one grew impatient

but only the dog, host-like, walked with us

back to our car. The lawn-watering sprays

ticked over, and over. And we saw

that out on that bare, crusted country

background and foreground had merged;

nothing that existed there was background.