I woke up this morning thinking of this poem, it must have been in my dreams
somehow, and couldn't rest until I had tracked it down in what is at present
a most chaotic library - my poetry books are scattered over the house. But I
finally found it. It is one of my favourite of all Australian poems, just so
sheerly and strangely beautiful. Stow (b 1935) is better known for his
novels, which are also wonderful, but he seems to have been largely
forgotten in the larger narrative myth of OzPo.
Stow's is a kind of voice which strikes me as inimitably Australian,
although it doesn't "fit" the nationalist narrative that usually goes with
that - in a way I kind of bracket him with Patrick White. I love the
precarious but never faltering balance here between the actual and epic
lament. (Btw, all the plants he mentions, aside from hay, are feral weeds.)
Btw, Roger, do you know the poetry of Francis Webb? Another amazing poet
from mid-century who is less well known than he ought to be.
All the best
A
Ruins of the City of Hay
The wind has scattered my city to the sheep.
Capeweed and lovely lupins choke the street
where the wind wanders in great gaunt chimneys of hay
and straws cry out like keyholes.
Our yellow Petra of the fields: alas!
I walk the ruins of forum and capitol,
through quiet squares, by the temples of tranquillity.
Wisps of the metropolis brush my hair.
I become invisible in tears.
This was no ratbags' Eden: these were true haystacks.
Golden, but functional, our mansions sprang from dreams
of architects in love (O my meadow queen!)
No need for fires to be lit on the yellow hearthstones;
our walls were warmer than flesh, more sure than igloos.
On winter nights we squatted naked as Esquimaux,
chanting our sagas of innocent chauvinism.
In the street no vehicle passed. No telephone,
doorbell or till was heard in the canyons of hay.
No stir, no sound, but the sickle and the loom,
and the comments of emus begging by kitchen doors
in the moonlike silence of morning.
Though the neighbour states (said Loa Tse) lie in sight of the city
and their cocks wake and their watchdogs warn the inhabitants
the men of the city of hay will never go there
all the days of their lives.
But the wind of the world descended on lovely Petra
and the spires of the towers and the statues and belfries fell.
The bones of my brothers broke in the breaking columns.
The bones of my sisters, clasping their broken children,
cracked on the hearthstones, under the rooftops of hay.
I alone mourn in the temples, by broken altars
bowered in black nightshade and mauve salvation jane.
And the cocks of the neighbour nations scratch in the straw.
And their dogs rejoice in the bones of all my brethren.
Randolph Stow
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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