My Ministry
In my dream, the Premier wanted me
as State Minister of Poetry
Victoria¹s very first.
I was alone standing on the street
near where Spring and Bourke meet,
gazing at my ministerial vehicle
the size of a caravan, white
without windows or visible
wheels, its metal skirt
hovered just above the asphalt.
It lacked door-handle, door or window;
a cool monument neatly iced over.
I kept my hands in my pockets,
trying to conceal my puzzlement,
pondering an agenda.
Waking now, I smiled in the dark,
thinking: possibilities...¹
letting them form and develop.
Maternity wards would hear from me first:
for every newborn a large book of verse:
in front, Mother Goose and lullabies;
behind, the archives of the Opies.
Next: folktales, Joseph Jacobs¹ versions,
Edward Lear and annotated Carroll.
My team of helpers would soon
be visiting each home.
Are the adults and older children
singing and reciting well?
Dandling and chortling, chanting
the English-language canon,
how¹s it all coming on?
Are the state¹s kindergarten
teachers chiming in unison?
TV and radio fulfilling their quotas?
Big Poem Brothers, Big Poem Sisters
hover among the new generation
making sure memorization
is joyful and on schedule...
Returned to the corner of Bourke and Spring,
I found no sign of my ministerial vehicle -
like ice dissolved, evaporated, gone.
The experiment was off.
On the big screen at Federation Square
no epic events in striding hexameters,
nor oedipal anagnorisis and
catharsis, no sublime rhetoric,
no richly comic vernacular,
nor tender intricacies of love,
but - see the big men fly!¹,
and clash of titans!¹,
and poetry in motion!¹.
Football still held all eyes.
Wednesday 3 August 2005
Max Richards
at Cooee, North Balwyn, Melbourne
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