Now you upset all our work
The Greek herbs we have coaxed
To grow beside the Irish Sea,
The ice plants that sparkled in the sun,
The saxifrage and sempervivum
All uprooted upended and undone
Dying in the dry morning.
Even the Alpine strawberries are crushed.
With pockets full of worms
You thrust between our stones
And shoulder out our herbiage
As we might move unnecessary chairs
Or side tables when we want to dance.
 
We’ll make a pact and leave you be
And one day see you stretched out on the rocks
Entombed like a Parsee
And out of place and time
As if you were the polar bear in Tunis zoo.

Marcelle Freiman

Normal

Marcelle believes that her poem is best complemented by the work of Hossein Valamanesh, 'On the way 1990', shown below.

Image courtesy Macquarie University Art Gallery

‘… a generation that has witnessed nothing but war’ – Stephen Dupont.

He is seated against a wall

shaft of sunlight through the window,

knee bent, sole clasped in his hand,

his body at rest with tea and sweet sugar,

as if the day – normal as a potted plant

placed in the window’s light

has his life stitched to a tapestry of gestures –

as if each day would like to amble

like red and gold knots of wool on a loom,

tufting the years in the old patterns,  

and to pray five times from sunrise to sunset

means this day will step

exactly as its forebears –

but there’s just one minute

before the light-beam shift,

before darkness will shadow the room,

the tea grow cold in its copper,

his prayers be answered meagerly – with guns:

his face is already turned, not to be blinded.

Published in Marcelle Freiman, White Lines (Vertical), Hybrid Publishers, Ormond Vic. 2010. Permission received from publisher.

Elizabeth Claire Alberts

The First Time I Leave Home

I don’t go far. I live inside a tree in the yard,

a browning blue spruce with branches falling off,

a side gone. I step into the space between its arms,

my feet crushing needles and brushwood. Here

life feels closer. Sparrows I watched through paned glass

hover just above, flit bough to bough,

take off into open air. Sap sticks my fingers.

Wind nips the skin beneath my clothes. I make plans

for survival: gather sticks, berries, pine cones. Compose

my new home with a bed, fireplace, food store. The gap

between branches becomes my window. I see my mother

cooking in the kitchen. Why doesn’t she look

for me? I could slip away with the winged autumn leaves.

But I stay until sparrows no longer call,

until my breath sharpens with cold,

and the silver stretch of day tarnishes into gold-grey dusk.                       

And then I pelt from my tree home. Arms flapping,

ground pounding from my soles to the bone of my nose.

I race inside where the world is safe and enclosed,

where my mother has made dinner for us both.

Walls that Weep and Silent Witness by Jeremy Walsh.

Image courtesy Macquarie University Art Gallery. 

Telecom #2, 2008 by Rocket Mattler

Image courtesy of the artist.

Despite its moniker, the most recent exhibition held at the Macquarie University Art Gallery 'Silent Spaces' was hardly a silent space when a group of poets, led by the irrepressible Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Professor John Simons, shared their work with the assembled gathering.

The lunchtime event had been developed to coincide with the 'Silent Spaces' exhibition and was the brainchild of Dr Marcelle Freiman, Senior Lecturer in English and Creative Writing from the Department of English, who has been keen to create a 'space for poetry' to be heard and enjoyed. 

During the reading John Simons delivered inspiring selections from his new work, Marcelle Freiman read from her latest book White Lines (Vertical), and English students read from published and current works in progress.

For those of you who were unable to attend this august occasion we are most fortunate to be able to share a selection of the poetry matched with some of the inspirational works from the 'Silent Spaces' exhibition.

The Silent Spaces exhibition.

Image courtesy Macquarie University Art Gallery.

Carmel Summers

Poet Carmel Summers thinks that her poem, 'Revisiting the Lilian Fraser Garden' is best complemented by the work of Alexander McKenzie, 'Running to the Red House 2008', shown below far right.

Image courtesy Macquarie University Art Gallery

Lilian Fraser

botanist and pioneer

a butterfly

flits about the darkness

of a shadowed dogwood

I tread a mosaic

of dropped camellia petals

if only regrets

could be shed as lightly

and with such grace

this stone bench

where we whispered

forever

rose leaves shiver

in the autumn breeze

with each soft breath

watching shadows

flicker and weave

a green ant zigzags

along a stem of grass

marigolds, daisies

thyme – scents from a garden

long ago

I want to run and skip

indulge in childhood games

tang of damp earth

jacaranda roots

reach deep

where does a mother turn

when her children have gone

the garden path

merges into shadows

reaching the gate

…I pause

pull it shut behind me

Revisiting the Lilian Fraser Garden was published in Moonset, Spring/Summer 2010, Vol 6 No 1

Carmel Summers

there must be something more…

outside, the ripple of laughter-splashed air

in her room, she holds a pearl-backed mirror

lifts a corner of her skirt, pirouettes

peers at her reflection

fingertips explore the swell

of nascent breasts

yesterday, she and her sister

hands linked, had twirled

in a circle, faster, faster

laughed til they couldn’t stand, flopped

head to head on the grass

watched sky and tree tops

spin, spin, spin

but now she hears the clatter

of plates from the kitchen

sees her mother’s grim resignation

a small town future

in her reflection

sets down her mother’s mirror

outside her window

shadows bar the empty yard

Image courtesy Macquarie University Art Gallery.

Carmel Summers believes that her poem, 'there must be something more...' is best complemented by the work of Jane Burton, 'Motherland No 1', shown above far right.