Reflections in Poems
By Tim Murray
I ply the pencil of my threadbare art
searching for words that might encapsulate
the essence –
a poignant moment,
telling irony,
a paradox perhaps or
something central to the heart of things:
a simple truth, still point,
a distillation.
I fashion words as best I can,
building patterns,
patching, matching,
shaping images, sharpening edges,
blending tones and colours,
listening for the echo of sense in sound.
And so I put my writing
on the line
to mirror the reflections
of my mind.
For over sixty years I have written satirical verse and I have put much of that together in a volume called Just Joking. I have only really become 'serious' about writing poetry during the last six years and I have enjoyed sharing what I have written with family and friends.
Naturally part of the process of enjoyment is to read other people's poetry and what other people have said about poetry. Out of all that two remarks have struck me as particularly telling.
The first is a remark Clive James made in an interview about his approach to writing poetry. 'I like to turn a phrase until it catches the light' he said. As I refine my first draft which is generally hasty and wordy, I try to keep Clive James's observation in mind, and occasionally I feel happy with the light I have caught.
The second is the comment by C Day Lewis. "I write poetry not to be understood but to understand.' I am very conscious of this as I think about ideas, words, phrases and images. In the search for these things one gets closer to understanding what one thinks and feels and is trying to say.
It's all a fascinating process and an intriguing dimension to life. I will continue to turn a phrase and seek understanding by writing poetry for as long as I can.
Tim Murray
December 2015
* * * * *
The Battle of Fromelles occurred in France on 19-20 July, 1916. The action was partly intended as a diversion from the Battle of the Somme that was being waged about 80 kilometres south.
The operation, carried out midway between the British-occupied village of Fleurbaix and the village of Fromelles behind the German lines, aimed to retake a salient just north of Fromelles. The action was a combined operation between British troops and the AIF.
It was the first occasion the AIF saw action on the Western Front. After a night and a day of fighting 1,500 British and 5,533 Australian soldiers had been killed, wounded or taken prisoner. It was a decisive German victory and the Allies gained no ground.
The Australian War Memorial describes the battle as ‘the worst 24 hours in Australia’s entire history’.
Many of the dead were left in no-man’s land and buried by the Germans in a mass grave at Pheasant Wood, where they were discovered in 2007 by a Melbourne schoolteacher, Lambis Englezos.
The first of the bodies was re-interred in January this year, with the 250 unnamed soldiers laid to rest yesterday at a moving ceremony attended by the Governor General and thousands of family members.
20 July 2010
Fromelles.
Yesterday the ghosts of young men
massacred so long ago
were finally
laid to rest.
A long silence
has ended in a show of
dignity and love, and
a mass grave of shattered
anonymity
has been replaced by a shrine of
resolution and peace.
-
The Australian reports the scene
along with other stories deemed worthy of sharing
the same page:
a Victorian father of the year is
stripped of his title after
a love child betrays his infidelity;
a group of privileged boys goes on a
shop-lifting spree, convinced that having everything is
not enough;
a father stands trial for drowning his three small sons
in a dam;
a huge casino is made more huge promising to help
gambling addicts
with a tiny percentage of the
profits;
a report finds that 25% of young people have
mental health problems;
burial sites of North Vietnamese
are unearthed – killed by Australians years after
the war to end all wars.
-
In the midst of this
the Fromelles ghosts may well be spooked by fears
they died in vain.
-
Lest We Forget?
With the recent ceremony at Fromelles, World War One diggers have been very much in our minds. There have been many news items about their heroism and sacrifice and the honoured place they have in our history.
It was not surprising, therefore, that my eye was taken today by a photograph of a group of diggers.
I was not expecting the context of their story to be a recently published book by Dr Peter Stanley entitled Bad Characters: Sex, Crime, Mutiny, Murder and the Australian Imperial Force.
2 August 2010
The picture of the Aussie diggers –
ten young faces beneath
slouch hats
giving cheery smiles towards the camera –
looked familiar.
We have seen them by the thousand –
volunteers who heard the call to rally
and support the motherland
against the Hun.
True patriots all, heroic in their
sacrifice and service.
The agony of war soon demonstrated
that dying for your country was not so
sweet
and 60,000 men did not come
home.
Of the ten young Anzacs in the photograph
all survived.
‘Thank God for that’ we say, ‘that’s some small blessing.’
A blessing -
or a curse –
who now can tell?
They posed together,
said their ‘au revoir’,
signed off and
deserted.
Today is 6 August 2010. I was reminded of the significance of this day when I saw Leunig’s cartoon, layered with quite poignant irony. Two derelicts are sitting on a bench:
Ah yes. This is the day that sheds a bright mysterious light on those who aspire to political power. Those who make things happen. Those who make decisions. Those who make a difference and lead humanity into a new world.
Why today?
It’s Hiroshima Day.
On Saturday 19 November 1994 Michael Kelly and I visited Hiroshima and the Peace Dome, the Peace Park and the Museum. It was a hugely moving experience.
6 August 2010
Monday morning. 8.15, August 6, 1945.
Blue sky: all clear – a day of promise and
infinite possibility.
High above, the Enola Gay climbs
beyond 30,000 feet
beyond credibility,
beyond imagination.
Little Boy – a euphemism of unparalleled irony –
is released
and for 43 seconds the heavens
hold their breath.
Nineteen hundred feet above the doomed Hiroshima
Little Boy detonates and the terrible explosion lights
the morning sky bringing
death to the city and
shame to the world.
Ten years and 200,000 lives later, a little girl,
dying from the ‘atom bomb disease’
folds her six hundred and forty fourth and final
paper crane.
Her young friends fold more and
bury Sadako and the 1000 paper cranes and
make a wish for her at the foot of her memorial:
This is our cry. This is our prayer.
Peace on earth.
I have seen the Peace Park and the domed skeleton
stark against another blue sky;
I have seen the flame that will be extinguished
only when the threat of nuclear destruction
disappears from the world;
I have seen Sadako’s memorial draped
in paper cranes,
tributes from children who live in hope and
keep her spirit alive;
I have seen ground zero and
I have wept.
Today is Hiroshima Day.
Today is Remembrance Day. In fact it is the 92nd anniversary of the Armistice that came into effect at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 to end the ‘Great War’.
At 11.00am today I was in painting class but at that moment we all stopped what we were doing and stood in silence for a minute thinking our own thoughts.
At the same time last year we were at Kinross House at our Art Exhibition and when we all stood in silence Rosalie played some reflective music on her harp. Over the years I have been in many different places on this day but we have always stopped to pay our respects.
This year my tribute is to write this poem.
11 November 2010
War’s crippling devastation is so obscene
that nothing in our worst imaginings
can span the gaping void that separates us
from their torment.
On this day so many years ago
the guns fell silent.
Silence had already engulfed
some sixteen million children, men and women,
give or take,
entangled in that monstrous massacre –
a genocide beyond our comprehension
no matter what we’ve read or seen or heard.
Simple symbols must suffice to say
what can’t be said:
the poppy worn in the lapel – blood red
from Flanders Fields;
a still silence only stirred by the whisperings
of the dead;
the bugled lament for the last farewell –
poignant, powerful, resonating
through eternity.
Such symbols speak the unspeakable for us.
We can’t remember
but we must never
forget.
In April I became a Foundation Friend of the Shrine and on the evening of Thursday 19 May I attended a production of The Girls in Grey, written by Carolyn Bock and Helen Hopkins, and performed in the Crypt at the Shrine especially for Friends of the Shrine.
I found myself sitting next to a bronze statue. The performance was a unique and moving experience and inspired me to write this poem.
20 May 2011
Deep in the crypt at the heart of the Shrine, shoulder to shoulder, stand
father and son
symbols of the courage and sacrifice of two generations
called to serve in two
vast wars.
On a chilly evening in late autumn I sat in snug comfort
at their feet,
as three girls in grey lived again
the passion and commitment of their vows
to their country and
their profession.
As words from letters and diaries
echoed through the vaults of that
sacred place,
and shadows played on pillars, flags
and bronze,
that little tribute there was transformed
and transforming:
time became timeless,
three became a multitude,
the little crypt became the world stage
watched over by every father and son,
mother and daughter -
all nationalities,
all wars,
all the sacrifice,
all the waste –
all there,
with me in snug comfort
at their feet.
In the course of the Egyptian conflict in 2013 I was struck by the image of a hospital where fighters from both sides were being treated and often men who had been fighting each other were now lying on beds next to each other.
Wilfred Owen's poems 'Futility' and 'Strange Meeting' came vividly to mind and I wanted somehow to try to capture the tragic truth of the moment.
May 2013
They lie
side by side
dreams and bodies shattered in the new reality of
lost limbs, lost sense,
lost certainty:
the loyalist and the rebel
fundamentally at odds in their intolerant
intolerable worlds
now too late united
in makeshift beds
where
side by side
they lie
still.
In the build up to the hundredth anniversary of the first Anzac Day there was a huge amount of publicity and much speculation about its significance in Australian History.
I was taken by an article that tended to emphasise that the things we remember are essentially a way of not remembering the things that are too painful. That article prompted this poem
25 April 2015
A hundred years today
a dawn attack
a bloody baptism of fire and
fear and the
fierce breath
of death
and worse -
the curse of blind command in a
futile cause -
and ultimately
silent retreat past
silent comrades
lying
still.
"Greater love"
"Noble sacrifice"
"Lest we forget'
We trot out tributes
toy with souvenirs
lest we, in fact,
remember
******
* * * * *
Next Tuesday is the 50th Anniversary of the famous tied Test Match in Brisbane in December 1960 between Australia and the West Indies. That was the month I returned to Australia after 20 months overseas travelling, teaching at the Dragon School in Oxford and playing cricket.
Ron Lovitt took the famous photograph of the dramatic run out that tied the Test. Lovitt was photographer for ‘The Age’. He had 36 negatives to last him the day. When Wes Hall began the final eight ball over Lovitt had one negative left.
It was the seventh ball that he snapped just at the psychological moment. The picture became an icon. For years it was the cover of every cricketing score book.
Most cricket lovers old enough to remember know where they were at that dramatic moment when Joe Solomon’s throw from square leg found Ian Meckiff just short of his ground.
Alan McGilvray and his mate Keith Miller left the Gabba at tea to catch an early flight home to Sydney believing that the West Indies had the match in the bag. It was one of their worst errors of judgement. Funny game cricket!
The photograph has been inspirational and inspired this poem.
7 December 2010
Each had one shot left and a split second to decide.
They fired.
Both found their mark
and that fleeting moment in cricketing time
is etched forever in the great story of
the Noble Game.
There are eight figures in the frame:
Joe Solomon shoots from side on,
shattering the stumps;
Wes Hall holds hands aloft in
hopeful exhaustion;
Garfield Sobers gestures and shouts in
triumphant appeal;
Rohan Kanhai leaps high in a
dance of delight;
‘Keeper Gerry Alexander flings ecstatic arms
skyward;
Captain Frank Worrell crouches and surveys,
ever watchful;
Lindsay Kline looks back in anxious concern, as
Ian Meckiff strides and stretches, desperate
but doomed.
Ron Lovitt’s famous photograph captured that iconic moment
exactly fifty years ago
when neither side savoured the sweet taste
of victory
nor suffered the desolation
of defeat.
The prize was far more precious that day in the
‘Greatest Test of All’
and the winner was
Cricket itself.
Earlier this month I read about Tibby Cotter in a book I was given for becoming one of the first 500 'Friends of the Shrine'. Tibby was the only Australian test cricketer to be killed in the First World War.
I got the idea of writing a bit of an Aussie ballad on Tibby and this is the result.
20 April 2011
His name was Albert Cotter but the world knows him as Tibby,
the fastest bowler ever, people say;
and Tibby was a legend with a fearful reputation,
the Thompson, Lee and Lillee of his day.
He splintered stumps asunder: they called him ‘Terror Cotter’;
the Poms were keen to have the Terror banned.
When skipper Darling brought him on and set an eight one field
consternation spread across the land.
In nineteen hundred and five he played the gentlemen of England
and bowled a beamer straight at Doctor Grace,
who thought the brash colonial was really not a gentleman
to bowl a ball at such a height and pace.
They say he was a larrikin who always spoke his mind,
a dinkum Aussie and a loyal mate;
he loved his sport and played eight years of cricket for Australia
and captured 89 at 28.
But then the clouds of war began to gather in the north
to shatter many people’s hopes and dreams;
and Tibby gave his verdict to his country’s strong appeal
and khaki took the place of flannelled creams.
The time had come to test himself, apply his strength and skill
on different fields of battle far away;
and so he joined his team mates on the slopes of Anzac Cove
where Turkish soldiers, well dug in, held sway.
The prospect of an outright victory soon evaporated
and both sides looked like playing out a draw;
in fading light our boys drew stumps and quietly left the field,
as silence settled on that sacred shore.
They all regrouped in Cairo for some further team selection
and Tibby transferred back to 12th Light Horse.
their mission was to drive the Turks from Palestine and Sinai,
a mighty challenge for this mighty force.
The brilliant bowler now became a mounted stretcher bearer redeeming what he could of pain and loss. Through desperate heat and cold he ran the gauntlet of the battle fields Protected only by a blood-red cross.
In May of ’17 the speedster Cotter was promoted: it was his due, but soon he told them ‘Thanks, I’d rather play the game out as a trooper with my mates,’ and so returned to join the other ranks.
On the last day of October as the evening shadows lengthened and the burning orange sun began to fade, the vital word was given to the 4th and 12th Light Horsemen and so the great Beersheba Charge was made.
When the Turks laid down their weapons in a gesture of surrender many brave young warriors lay dead, and one was Tibby Cotter who was picked off by a sniper who shot him from behind and through the head.
So Albert Tibby Cotter had bowled his final over and earned his place among Australia’s best. in peace he played the noble game but when the bugle blew he made reply and passed his final Test.
Of all the 60,000 lads who didn’t make it home just one had worn the famous baggy green. He played and fought with equal zest and made us understand what sportsmanship and patriotism mean.
Towards the end of May I received a letter from the Organising Committee for the Cricket Art Prize and Cricket Poetry Award 2011.
The guidelines for poetry entries made it clear that my poem Tibby would not qualify both because of its theme of a Test Cricketer and because it is about three times longer than the maximum of 150 words.
Guidelines are that the poem should celebrate ‘aspects of life in and around the game and sport of cricket, in settings of backyard cricket, beach cricket, social-cricket or local club cricket.’ The genre may be Narrative, Dramatic, Satirical, Lyrical, Elegy or Verse Fable.
On the strength of this I revisited the school memory of The Lie in my Telling Tales and rewrote it as follows.
2 June 2011
‘Does he know anyone here?’ asked the Housemaster gently.
‘Oh yes’ –
and with that little lie my father left me there
alone,
alone to dream of faraway friends
and bikes and yabbies and blissful hours of
family cricket.
‘Want a hit?’ my brother’s voice echoed from the untouchable past,
‘It’s my bat!’
I was Lindwall or Miller or big Alec Bedser
but my brother was Bradman and he
liked batting.
Closer voices now. I watched at a safe distance
as other self-styled heroes hit and ran,
danced and dived, and appealed with
dramatic delight.
‘Six and out’ decreed a miniature Voce
as the ball lobbed close
to my dreams.
‘Mine’ I thought
and fetched
and threw back.
‘Want a bowl?’ 'I’ll field.’ ‘Right ho.’
I fielded.
Finally the bell summoned us to cake and cordial
and we all went in
together.
Daddy was right. I had some friends -
already.
Early in March I had word from the organisers of the Cricket Poetry Award that they are holding the event again this year and encouraging entries. I let Dick know about it and was delighted when he shared two poems with me.
On the strength of all this I have written the following which I may well submit as the year unfolds.
1 April 2012
The looping wires climb and swoop to the train’s rhythm
as I gaze unseeing at the tedious sprawl
of suburbia.
Suddenly the scene changes.
I focus.
Six three field, ‘keeper standing up,
batsman crouched, poised,
fieldsmen tense, alert,
bowler off a short run,
right arm over, high action,
plenty of air, a bit of loop.
Please let me see the shot!
Down the track, well across,
nicely balanced, eyes on the ball,
straight through the line, sweetly timed,
picks the gap between mid off and cover,
ball speeds over the outfield, nestles in the long grass
beyond the scoreboard.
Well played!
Spectators applaud, umpire flourishes ‘four’,
batsmen confer, high five,
bowler glares, ‘keeper gloves encouragement,
captain moves backward square to extra cover,
seven two,
bold.
They disappear from sight and sound, ten glorious seconds
etched
in the memory.
Cricket magic.
******
* * * * *
While we were staying at 84 The Spit, Mooloolaba, Ewan, Lisa and Griffin came to stay for the weekend. Our apartment was only a short boardwalk to the beach and on Sunday afternoon the three of them enjoyed the beach together.
I think it was Griffin’s first experience of the joys of sand and sea. With busy spade he began mining and tunnelling. Then it was time to venture into the ocean. Given half a chance he would have headed for New Zealand: he is quite a fearless little man.
His father decided a more limited experience was probably the go and I was inspired to write A New Freedom.
26 July 2010
Two pairs of feet anchor in the sand as
another wave breaks, scurries
up the beach,
lingers in a ribbon of bubble and froth
and retreats.
The small boy squeals in fearful delight
as big hands and little hands grip
more tightly.
The sea swells again,
darkens,
curls
and breaks,
exploding in a myriad silver shafts that
tickle and tease the
little adventurer,
tethered by sand and suction,
secure in his father’s love,
free as the wind and the sea and a new
sense of
possibility.
Today is one of Anne’s quartet Sundays. For over a decade Margaret Wu, Geoff Gloster, Hymie Wien and Anne have come together here as a quartet every second or third Sunday morning. While they play in the sitting room downstairs I am often painting or drawing in my room upstairs.
I often think that when we are all busily involved in these activities our little worlds are at their best and we are very fortunate people. My responsibility is to fix morning tea and we get together then and sort out the world.
29 August 2010
The four walls of my little upstairs room
at once contain and liberate my zeal
to paint.
Inspired by a Thursday class of spirits
tarred, as it were, by the same obsessive brush,
we listen, look and widen our horizons;
we explore
the methods of the masters, emulate techniques
and gradually make our own discoveries.
We cherish vital moments:
perhaps when listening we hear a telling truth;
when looking we actually see; or
make a mark that seems exactly right.
As I strive for such a moment in my room
the strains of music filter up the stairs.
For ten years now the four have gathered here
to harmonise and share their passion for
making music happily together – and
sorting out the world at morning tea!
A rare quartet
of disparate kindred spirits.
Inspired by Mozart, Monet, Bach and Constable,
we explore some possibilities of our art –
rhythm, tone and colour,
composition -
and share the joys of
creativity.
The death of Professor Hedley Beare last week reminded me of an Address I gave at the Canberra Grammar Junior School Speech Day in 1990 in which I referred to three pieces of writing by three different grandfathers.
One of those grandfathers was Hedley Beare who had written a letter to his young grandson, Ben. Another was Michael Thwaites, a good friend and a fine poet. I quoted from his beautiful poem To Our Grandchildren and that encouraged me to think about Griffin.
He has been in such good form lately. He’s bursting with the joy of life and discovery. He’s a real character and I was moved to write this little poem to him.
16 September 2010
Although it's less than eighteen months since your
beautiful mother brought you
into the world in a labour of exquisite
agony and joy,
already you have qualities that will shine in you
all your life.
You know what you want, don’t you,
and you have strategies galore to
find a way.
It’s ‘me do’ with you!
How quickly you learn when you do it
your way –
fraught, of course, as your hasty descent of fourteen stairs
so dramatically demonstrated.
Remember?
How could we forget?
Your bright eyes twinkle with
cheeky humour and
quick wit.
The sheer delight that spreads across your face
when you are with the special people in your life
is a joy to behold.
You are surrounded by love and you trust
that love.
What a start to life you have. Who knows
where its twists and turns will
take you, but already
you have an extraordinary energy and
focus, zest and
understanding.
You’re bursting to get on with it all –
now.
Most importantly you have a sense
of the strength and power
of love
and this will be part of you
for ever.
Some time ago I purchased the war record of Frederick William Wilson from the Australian War Memorial. I revisited it again this week. Frederick Wilson was my uncle, my father’s half brother. Frederick’s war record is a tragic story in its simplicity and lack of fulfilment. He arrived in France on 16 May 1916. In less than a year he was dead, killed on the bloody first day of the Second Battle of Bullecourt on 3 May 1917. During those twelve months he was wounded in action and hospitalised: he was hospitalised twice as a result of illness – Diptheria, Tonsilitis and Scabies. He remained a Private and spent most of his time in the trenches. There are poignant requests from his mother for a certificate of death, for medals, for any remaining personal belongings. I don’t remember my father ever talking about his brother even though he would have been fifteen when Frederick went away never to return. The simplicity of Frederick’s story adds to the tragedy of that awful war.
22 September 2010
The bronze digger’s gaze is fixed forever across
the years
and across the killing fields
of 1917.
He stands just outside Bullecourt along the
Rue Australiens.
On one desperate day in April and ten in May the AIF lost
10,000 men here, killed or wounded, innocent victims of
blind command
too soon doomed in a stubborn cause. One of the slaughtered
was a clerk from Bruthen.
Blue eyes, brown hair, fresh complexion,
Frederick William Wilson was just twenty four.
He had volunteered in 1915, promising to serve his
Sovereign Lord the King until the end
of the war.
Private Wilson’s war ended on the third of May, 1917.
He vanished without trace – buried where he fell, perhaps,
in an unmarked grave or
blown into too many bits and left
to rot.
As you are no doubt aware the area was one over which some particularly fierce
fighting took place, with the result that the majority of surface markings were
affected thereby rendering it a difficult task to locate and identify graves.
Three times Private Wilson was committed to hospital and
three times he recovered from wounds and illness
only to drown in the ‘blood tub’
of Bullecourt.
How many Miltons lie mute
beneath those lush green fields and the
gaze of the bronze digger?
What agonies did they endure in those
dark, demented days when the world
went mad?
What dreams might Frederick Wilson have realized
had the dice of death and life fallen
differently –
as they did for his brother, my father,
and the nephew he never knew
who bears his name?
As I thought about the uncle I never met and the way the dice of death and life fall I thought again of my father. The dice fell well for him in many ways.
His life could have remained a very humble one had it not been for the influence of Mr Prentice, the Primary School teacher in Bruthen, who saw my father’s ability and urged him to sit for a scholarship to Wesley College in the city.
There he became Dux and gained a scholarship to Trinity College at The University of Melbourne and in due course he gained a scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford.
His love affair with life there shines through in his letters home from 1924 to 1926 which my brother, Michael, has edited in Haunts of his Youth.
On his return to Australia he began his ministry, became happily married and had two sons.
His quality was readily recognised and soon he was appointed to be Vicar of Christ Church, North Adelaide, then Christ Church South Yarra and then, from the beginning of 1944, Bishop of Riverina, the youngest Australian Anglican Bishop.
Riverina in 1944 was something of a poisoned chalice I think. The country was in the thick and thin of drought, and war was still raging in Europe and the Pacific.
By 1950 he was surely being identified as someone who would take on greater responsibilities in the Australian Church, very possibly as Archbishop of Melbourne when that position became available.
However the dice of life and death were rolled again on 26 June 1950 and the AMANA crashed taking all on board to their deaths including my father who was returning from Perth having been conducting a Mission for Youth there.
Several years ago I visited the AMANA Memorial at Beverley in Western Australia and wrote a poem which I include here.
25 September 2010
A minor inconvenience prompts a wife to
telephone her husband.
He leaves the plane to take the call. “Yes dear, I…
Yes…of course…I’ll come straight home.”
He went,
another day’s work done, with fuel levels checked
and cross feed drain cock
opened.
Not far away another husband turns for home
mission accomplished –
accomplished in the faith that lives he’s touched will
shine their light and
be a force
for good.
Perhaps as he and the other twenty eight
prepared for take-off
he might have envied those whose
duty dealt so simply, day by day, in
the destiny of
drain cocks.
The rest is history: all died
and lives in countless thousands turned and twisted
differently
as a result, and will
for ever.
At Beverley, quite close to where AMANA crashed
a resurrected landing leg now stands
reminding all who care or casually come by
about that fateful, ultimate
good night.
Who knows what might have been had a phone call not
been made
or had a cross feed drain cock not
been left
open.
I have been reading again the letters my father wrote home during his Oxford years, 1924 – 1927, which Michael has edited and put together in a substantial volume called Haunts of his Youth.
This title was prompted by a letter Charles wrote from Christ Church, Oxford, on 8 November 1925:
I hope that one day I shall come back and walk in Tom Quad and sit in the Cathedral with the other old clergy who listen there and dream. Perhaps I shall. But if not, I shall at least do so in thought, and that will be nearly as good.
I have no desire to stay and grow old here, although it would be very easy to do. But I suppose every man wants to return some day to the haunts of his youth and people the quads and halls of School and College with Memories.
In May 2008 I received two postcards from Michael written in Oxford. One was a picture of The University Church of St Mary the Virgin and Michael wrote
Here in the Church of St Mary the Virgin, where Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley were tried and JH Newman was incumbent, I posted a prayer on the prayer board
We remember the souls of all the departed and particularly Charles Herbert Murray who was assistant priest here 1924 – 25 while a student at Christ Church.
The other was a picture of Tom Quad, Christ Church, Oxford and Michael wrote
Here, between 1924 and 1927, CHM penned his letters and cards, which eventually totalled 400. They went by ship to Melbourne, thence to ‘Hillcrest’, Bruthen where his mother read and kept them. The journey took perhaps six to eight weeks.
Today they are all returned to their place of origin, stored on a thin disk which fits easily in one’s pocket. Eighty years on, they are back where they started.
Given all this nostalgia I decided to write a poem!
14 October 2010
If we could gratify the greedy year
and share together for some borrowed hour
the youthful haunts you loved beneath Tom Tower
what would you tell? What people would we meet
What simple pleasures that you revelled in
would prompt a knowing smile, nostalgic tear?
Perhaps we’d share a glass of beer with friends
with Jeffries, Hancock, Newman, Roy or Reg
with Roberts, Fisher or, with chaperone
some girls you sailed with on the Jervis Bay
or even Vera Jennings: that I’d like
Perhaps we’d yarn or take a quiet stroll
along the High, the Meadows or the Park
or maybe ride our bicycles away
to Woodstock, Wantage, through the Market Place
and pop into a quiet church or two
and share a prayer, absorb the atmosphere,
reflect on what those old and musty walls
may well have witnessed over centuries
since Norman times – a rich inheritance.
Perhaps we’d have the opportunity
to witness the incomparable art
of Sybil Thorndike playing in Saint Joan
or one of Barrie’s plays or Peer Gynt
Perhaps we’d lunch with ‘Rawlers’ (Rawlinson!)
to whom you read the fruits of your research –
your weekly essay – which could often be
an opus finished in the nick of time!
Perhaps we’d play a quiet game of tennis
and then reward ourselves with tea and cake
or dine in Hall or at the Choir School.
Perhaps I’d slip into a quiet pew –
St Mary’s at the University
where you were priest – and listen to you preach.
(Forgive me if I have a quiet doze!
Or we might close the day with Evensong
in the Cathedral which you loved so much.
Whatever things we chose to share together
beneath those towers and spires long ago
my greatest joy would be simply to yarn
and get to know the man you would become.
I’d like to share your passions, share your joys,
your sense of humour, visions, hopes and dreams;
I’d like to understand your strong convictions,
the nature of your faith, philosophy.
Before the bell in Great Tom Tower rang out
at 9.00pm I’d like to think that we
had bridged the gulf that fate imposed between us
and compensated for the stolen years.
I’d like to think that ultimately I
might understand what you believed – and why.
Yesterday I met with Lisa and Griffin in the city. Lisa wanted to take Griffin to St Paul’s Cathedral. He had never been inside a church before.
I chatted to the verger and we identified the plaque upon which all the precentors’ names are etched and there is ‘Alfred Wheeler 1899 – 1908’ the second name on the list following ‘George Sutton – 1891 – 1899’.
We also saw where the Canons of the Cathedral sit and my father’s name, ‘Canon CH Murray 1940 – 1943’ is there, seventh name on a list beginning with ‘Archdeacon TCB Stretch’.
My father was a Canon of the Cathedral since he was Vicar of Christ Church South Yarra from 1938 to 1943. We also have a sense of family belonging at the Cathedral because my father’s and my mother’s ashes rest below the Cathedral in the Crypt.
On the strength of reflecting about all that I wrote the following little piece.
12 October 2011
Dwarfed by the soaring columns of the great cathedral the little boy
lights a candle.
With this action, at once so simple and
so profound,
he senses something here
that must be taken
seriously
just as it was by my grandfather
whose name is etched in his place below the pulpit
where for nine years he led the worship in
prayer and song, and
just as it was by my father whose place
among the Cathedral Canons also
bears his name.
The weight of history here,
the lofty space,
the reverence,
all give cause to pause,
and wonder
where the light reflected in my little grandson’s eyes
might lead him
five generations
on.
In September 2011 my brother gave me about 1000 slides that had almost all been taken by our mother in the early 1960s and which were stored away in the familiar little Kodak boxes that we all knew so well back in those days.
They constitute a delightful record of many of her travels in the early 1960s and I selected 150 of them which I had transferred onto a CD.
As well as having that record I wrote this little piece of blank verse which is something of a matching piece to the ‘Letter to my Father’ I wrote last year.
22 November 2011
The faded labels stir my memory
and in imagination I can see
my mother’s eager fingers slitting round
the edges of each little yellow box
and holding up the slides against the light
to live again those moments long ago
when, once her boys had flown from the nest,
she also spread her wings and so began
the great adventure.
Now, with much delight,
I see again her friends of yesteryear:
there’s Harry, Kath and Michael, Millers all,
and Sybil Reeves and Molly Peberdy
and ‘dear old Zsoter’, artist, teacher, friend,
and Lady Constance Clark in Carlisle Place
just round the corner from the Crazy Gang,
and old Miss Living, ninety something then
when first I met her fifty years ago.
I see again some very special haunts
my mother loved and went to many times:
there’s Lords, of course – she revelled in it there –
the Oxford Cambridge match of sixty one;
her darling Abbey where she was a guide –
she loved the Poets’ Corner – and the Dean;
there’s Parliament and Smuts in powerful pose
and Number 10 so English and restrained;
in Cambridge there’s the river and St John’s,
her father’s College, sweet nostalgia;
she soaks up Stratford, birthplace of the Bard,
theatrical reflections all around;
and Cliveden, Blenheim, Bath and Coventry,
a Phoenix of great faith and poignancy;
there’s pubs and gardens, galleries galore,
St Giles and Princes Street in Edinburgh;
the Isle of Mull with Michael and with Gina;
Trafalgar Square on Tim’s last London day.
And so to Europe painting gear in hand
to thrive on all the art and history –
Montmartre, Bruges, Madrid and Barcelona,
Pompei, Rome and Florence, Amsterdam,
to Warsaw, Moscow and to Leningrad,
to Istanbul and Ismir where she held
a painting exhibition of her own.
She loved to go by sea on cargo boats;
she loved the trains and little Austin car;
she loved to walk and strike up conversations
and make new friends wherever she might be.
And now
I share again these images
of fifty years ago inviting me
to go with her in my imagination
and revel in her company again.
On the last day of 2011 Claire gave birth to a little boy. As I experienced the joy of this wonderful event I thought, too, of Anne’s failing health. The juxtaposition prompted my first poem for 2012.
1st January 2012
As shadows lengthened on the year’s last fading hours
and crowds staked out strategic vantage points
at once to celebrate both ending
and beginning,
echoes of familiar words first heard so long ago
lent rich perspective to
the moment -
‘To everything there is a season and
a time for every purpose
under heaven.’
On this very day my son’s own son
was born –
a time of infinite promise
to plant and reap,
to build and heal,
to dance and laugh
and love.
As a new year welcomes this precious arrival
I think of his grandmother and wonder
if there will be a time for him
to remember
her.
The Alpha and the Omega.
‘To everything there is a season…..’
Naturally I spend a lot of time thinking about Anne. In the midst of my grief I thought of her spirit as a river and the first draft of this poem was written at 3.00am! Over time I refined my thinking and I have shared this poem with family and friends.
15 May 2012
Like a great river her spirit was fashioned
by forces etched since the dawn
of time,
forging its course, building, broadening,
deepening, enriching,
life-giving;
flowing at last to final release
to merge free with the open sea
be at one with its depth and destiny,
respond to the touch of the sun, the
tug of the moon, and reflect
the face of the universe
and all
eternity
Despite remaining positive and getting on with life as best I can there's no escaping the fact that everything has changed - utterly, irrevocably, for ever. It's hard to resist writing about being alone and so I wrote this, to get it off my chest.
20 May 2012
Gone.
A pink gown languishes neglected behind the
bedroom door;
a bookmark betrays an unresolved story
too soon abandoned;
a hairbrush lies motionless
marooned
on the dressing table;
her favourite chair yawns in
aching
emptiness.
Gone,
never to return,
never.
A still void of hollow
silence,
a new dimension of
neverness,
no moreness,
not everness.
Gone -
utterly -
and yet -
and yet.......
I have just returned to Mount Martha from Mornington where Griffin and Essi had a lovely time at the playground and on the way home in the car Griffin wrote a poem. I then wrote a little poem for them and this is it.
7 July 2015
The boy in the green top
stops on the slide
on the way up beside
his little brother with the balloon
on the way down.
"Balloon' says the little boy.
"Red Balloon."
"Hoorah" they say and shout
about the balloon and the slide
and together they roll and sway
all the way down
in a tumble of laughter and legs
and a bouncing
red balloon.
******
* * * * *
For me one of the great joys of holidaying on the coast is the morning ritual: rise with the sun, take a lengthy walk on the beach, buy a tropical juice and settle down in a café for a leisurely read of the paper.
In due course it’s time to walk home, have breakfast and get organised. Every morning is different and there is so much to see and so much to think about.
The sea has, of course, inspired a vast amount of wonderful poetry. One of my favourite poems is The Eagle by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, written in 1851. It was one of the poems we committed to memory at school. I am always grateful that we had to learn poetry. Much of it has stuck.
The Eagle
He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ringed with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls.
18 July 2010
I wake to the rhythmic sound of
the surf
and feel the rising sun as I tread the
untrodden sand of
low tide.
The silver, crinkled sea
(‘wrinkled’ is better but what can you do?!)
stretches towards eternity, and
my own shadow points
up the beach to the mundane world of
now.
Ahead the dark, jagged rocks
sculpted and weathered by wind, sea
and time,
beckon ominously;
and beyond, in the mist, the shadowy outlines
of high-rise apartments stand,
strangely incongruous,
fleeting monuments to man’s
cleverness
The rocks will stand for almost ever
but the sea will
swirl and swill
until
time itself
stands
still.
One of the joys of walking along the beach is enjoying so many of the people who are engaged in the same pastime: fit young things dressed in all the gear and plugged into ipods to avoid hearing the sounds of the gulls and the sea; young people hand in hand with eyes and ears only for each other; intrepid joggers sticking to their exercise regime; and seniors – countless seniors - of all shapes and sizes. Grey power is on the march on the coast!
24 July 2010
Comfy in her track suit
Joan
grey-powers along the beach
arms pumping,
fingers clenched in mittoned
determination,
head snugly tea-cosied,
her proud shoes gleaming -
state of the art –
a podiatrist’s
paradise.
Darby,
retired bank manager from another age,
picks his careful way between shells
and bits of debris discarded
by the sea.
His sandals dangle from his fingers,
and the tops of his socks protrude from his
anorak pocket.
His trouser cuffs are neatly upturned,
a safe protection against the in-coming
tide.
He dreams of a warm cuppa from the thermos
and one of Joan’s
cookies.
Today Tim Blashki drove me, Dick Johnson and another retired psychiatrist friend, Michael, to his seaside home at Mount Martha to enjoy a painting day en plein air.
It was a perfect day and in the course of the afternoon I sat on the steps of a colourful bathing box and penned this little poem.
28 April 2011
On such a day –
as the sea glistens in silent celebration of the mid-day sun,
and fishing boats lie easy;
as sleek gulls lull in blissful idleness,
and slow ships hover on the horizon;
as lovers linger in the tingling shallows,
and bask in each other’s arms;
as bees cruise, circle, settle, and cruise again,
and a puppy scampers on urgent missions easily abandoned;
as retired Turners paint masterpieces in their dreams and brightly
coloured bathing boxes,
and all is languid and delicious –
on such a day,
if God created the sand and sea and sky,
then God saw that it was very good.
Each morning I enjoy a walk along the beach here at Port Douglas and watch the sun rise. Each morning is different: each morning is inspiring. Yesterday I saw an elderly couple, two young people obviously in love, and a mother holding a tiny baby: all were watching the sunrise.
The scene prompted this piece.
13 July 2011
Motionless
they gaze across the silver fractures of the sea
to the grandeur of the
rising sun.
White-rimmed clouds glow as the red fireball
flaunts its brilliance.
One couple, standing a little apart,
read each others’ thoughts and unspoken gratitude
for all they have shared
together
and the dramatic gift of
another day.
Young lovers hold close,
mirrored sharp against the sheen of the
tide-marked sand,
in awe at the great shafts of orange light
probing eternity,
inspired by the promise of a new beginning
and the depth of
their love.
Nearby a radiant young mother
enfolds her baby in her arms, as one
together,
as she marvels at the mystery of
new birth, new day,
new possibilities.
Six lives, six loves:
Gratitude and joy,
wonder and
hope
During my first week of sunrise beach walks at Port Douglas I encountered many of the same people engaging in their own routines in their own characteristic ways. There’s always plenty to focus the mind and the imagination and pen!
I regard this little observation as a celebration.
15 July 2011
I saw them again today – on the beach at sunrise:
the neat jogger, rhythmic, focussed and utterly self-contained;
the large lady with the little dog on the long lead;
the grey-powered senior splashing along in the shallows;
the fit young mother trundling her pusher at the double, baby glowing;
the slow pair in black, dour and silent, bearing the pain;
the two old-timers, rotund, garrulous, putting the world to rights;
the bespectacled student, working to the watch and the heart monitor;
back-packers bagged asleep on the beach, clothes strewn in palms for an airing;
the jolly lady with the wide shorts and the beaming ‘good morning’;
the wizened one, weathered and leathered, who has walked here for 50 years;
the gaunt, bearded greenie, a man with a mission;
the dawdlers, revelling in the sunrise and the sound of the sea;
the glamour girl with all the gear, ears plugged against natural interference.
The parade passes but the sea goes on for ever.
Several days ago I arrived at the beach a little earlier than usual. As far as I could see in all directions I was the first person on the beach that day. This ‘moment’ inspired many thoughts including this poem.
24 July 2011
On that day,
when the jagged palms stood stark
against the pink glow of morning light,
and the birds slept;
when the drained tide could recede no further
and grey seas chopped and rolled before a final
froth-edged spreading;
when the smooth-washed beach curved
and merged with the distant
brooding hills;
when silvered leaves and shells lay bedded snug
with piled pearls of glistening sand
crabbed from the world beneath;
when the full moon welcomed the first shafts of light
that would soon shape the rim
of the world:
on that day,
when the sea sang its song of hope and renewal,
mine was the first footprint
in the sand.
Today was our final day at Port Douglas and I enjoyed my 21st and final sunrise walk on the beach. I had seen an elderly couple walking together for about 10 days but on this final day she was alone. I wrote this poem on the flight home.
27 July 2011
‘Just you today’ I said as she approached along the beach,
a familiar figure welcoming the dawn.
Each step she took revealed her quiet resolve
despite the limp she tried so hard to hide.
We always shared a greeting
and she smiled –
a smile that spoke of stoic humour, a still
serenity.
Each day the two of them relished the miracle of
sun and sea and sand – the hand
of God perhaps – the profound simplicity of
re-creation,
arm in arm,
together.
This morning our eyes met and instinctively
we stopped.
‘Just you today’ I said. ‘Yes, just me
now.’
She smiled, lifted her eyes to the distant hills
and set out
alone.
******
* * * * *
On 15 July Anne and I took a taxi to the Sydney airport to fly to the Sunshine Coast. Anne’s heart was playing up and terminal 42 was a hell of a long way to walk. It was necessary to get a wheelchair for Anne.
While we were biding our time we saw a mother and her two daughters arrive. One of the girls was in a wheelchair. Almost certainly she had suffered from the desperate meningococcal disease. She had emerged with her life – living and partly living – but not her limbs.
16 July 2010
The face was young but the eyes
sad.
Large leather capsules
encased each leg, amputated
above the knee;
two rounded stubs of arms
hung helplessly from hunched shoulders,
as the girl’s mother wheeled what remained
of her life towards the
exit lounge,
and her younger sister
danced ahead.
Another wheel-chaired figure,
much older,
set her chin and tried to hide her
struggle for air;
she wedged her hand into her
hip and along her thigh
to counteract the burning pain.
The elderly gent behind,
with studied calm,
propelled his wife of forty something years
to the distant departure lounge
and the promised land.
-
One young life ruthlessly cut down to
utter dependence
at the dawn of a day that would
never be:
the other moving doggedly through
the afternoon light of a life
well lived,
accepting,
philosophical.
-
A poignant juxtaposition.
One can’t be on the coast very long before seeing images of the glamorous metre girls who patrol the streets of the Gold Coast tickling the fancy of many a male tourist and presumably dishing out fines at the same time. This is the place where the body is the thing.
It is noteworthy, therefore, that more and more of the visitors to the Gold Coast are committed to revealing virtually nothing of their body. I wonder what will emerge over the next few years.
28 July 2010
Bronzed and bikinid,
with saucy sashes and jaunty akubras,
the golden girls of the golden coast,
high-heeled priestesses of this
hedonistic heaven,
flirt and tease,
tantalisingly
untouchable,
except by the bold or a leap of the
imagination.
-
Also untouchable,
groups of women see the same world through
lowered eyes and a tiny slit
in their all-covering, flowing garments.
High priestesses of Islam
they mix with the children of the Sun God
but reveal nothing
of themselves.
The burqa and the bikini –
an incongruous
juxtaposition.
Today I had my regular lunch with Don Marles, Dick Johnson and Richard Smallwood. It is now 12 years since these began with Don, and soon Dick joined us, and then John Tunbridge and finally Richard. Each occasion is to be cherished: they are all very special friends.
Today Don’s regular haunt in Wellington Parade was particularly crowded and noisy but my new hearing aids served me brilliantly.
Don thought he recognised John Bartram, celebrated Australian sprinter of the 1940s, moving unsteadily to the stairs for a gathering on the first floor. It all prompted the following poem.
5 August 2010
The restaurant is crowded as more of
yesterday’s men
arrive with stick and hearing aid
ready to share, as best they can,
embellished memories of bygone days when,
fleet of foot and keen of eye they
ran and hit and revelled in the heady taste
of youth.
Yes, men of yesterday gather here,
granted leave by golden-wedded wives, or partners
of more recent times,
to speak a common language,
reminisce and speculate in equal measure about the worlds of
sport and politics.
Upstairs a special gathering convenes:
could it be sixty years
or even more
since these men shared in joint enterprise, a sporting team perhaps,
or armed combat?
Their comradeship shines through as half-heard
stories prompt half-heard
response
and gnarled hands shake in powerful,
painful bond.
These men deserve their moments spent together
where each accepts, and
is accepted,
unconditionally.
Early in May at painting class Virginia gave me a copy of her father in law’s poetry Collected Poems 1930 –1981. The poet is Joseph O’Dwyer who taught English at Xavier College for a number of years. Many of the poems appealed to me including 'I Have Seen the Tragedy'.
I Have Seen the Tragedy
I have seen the tragedy that stalks womanless lonely old men dining frugally in cafes, furtively watching the footpath, ashamed of the flame that lights behind their glasses whenever youthful beauty scandalously passes, as if it were not old age’s aftermath to gaze with undemanding love on beauty and watch with admiration how she walks, knowing the insecurity that dogs her heedless feet, her constant vulnerability to time and man’s deceit.
Clive James makes no bones about the fact that he believes the most beautiful sight in the world is a beautiful woman. These are some of the thoughts that prompted this poem.
25 June 2011
For a fleeting moment their paths cross as the city comes
to life.
Her deft fingers play freely over the compact screen
as she toys with worlds of
trivial fascination,
his gnarled hands reach deep into the pockets of his overcoat,
a threadbare fortress against the
chill air.
She jogs lightly on the spot maintaining the momentum of her
morning workout,
tongue of blonde hair gently teasing the hollow of her
arched neck;
he grasps the street sign to anchor
against the giddy rush of
early traffic,
his haunted face
gaunt and grey.
Her smooth shoulders curve and glisten in the
early light;
he bows beneath the burden of
another day.
She does not notice him,
and when the lights turn green
she bursts into the full rhythm of her stride,
a silent symphony of
ease and grace.
He watches her disappear across the
aching years.
As we moved into the countdown to Christmas I joined the multitudes in Chapel Street. Having just bought several bottles of Pinot Noir I was walking back along the footpath towards the tram when this encounter happened. Both the encounter and the poem were probably inevitable.
18 December 2011
Still as a stone he sat alone hunched on the
cold pavement. His upturned cap,
as threadbare as his dreams, yawned
at his feet,
and noosed about his neck hung one scrawled
cardboard word –
‘Homeless’.
Heedless passers-by hurried about their business:
I hesitated.
He slowly raised his head, haunted eyes meeting mine.
“Merry Christmas, Sir” he said
as I fumbled for a random clutch of
guilty coins.
“God bless you, Sir.”
I thrust my loose pieces of silver towards him
and turned away –
ashamed.
I was at the tram stop at Federation Square. I only saw them for a moment but moments are the stuff of which poems are made.
May 2013
Suddenly he was there -
the distorted body, braced and buckled,
the lurching head, the lolling swollen tongue,
the thin contorted arms cradling
clawed fingers,
the guttural moans shaped deep in his despair.
Escaping his agony I looked up to the
man behind,
guiding the chair through the city crowd -
his shoulders hunched beneath a
threadbare coat,
his heavy tread and gaunt grey face,
his weariness beyond
exhaustion:
but it was his eyes I saw,
haunted, desolate, yet resolute
utterly;
it was his eyes,
eyes fired with a father's love,
enduring,
unconditional,
absolute.
It was his eyes.
This little poem resulted from observations on the train between Hawksburn and Flinders Street
September 2013
She sat
immune,
wired,
deft fingers tracking urgent trivia,
preoccupied,
utterly elsewhere,
cacooned
in her digital world:
I stood,
marooned,
tuned to the immediate world of morning travellers,
imagining lives behind
grey masks,
marvelling at the city reflected along the
silent river.
I stood and saw and wondered:
she sat.
Having delivered the car to the smash repair people after the hit and run on Good Friday I took the 72 tram home along Malvern Road at the beginning of a school day. My experience on the tram prompted this poem.
29 April 2014
Their fresh young faces rudely glow with health
as they cluster in their seats in friendly groups
or sit apart to toy with images of
other worlds.
Well nurtured, well brought up,
fortune's favoured few,
they wear their coloured coats with easy pride -
moroon and purple, various shades of blue,
and pocketed mottos forged for noble living -
to pray and work,
to strive and serve and recognise
responsibility.
I hold on tight and keep my footing - just -
as we lurch forward.
A little further on the tram I knew
would spew out its young cargo
and I could rest awhile and contemplate
the virtues of an independent school
education.
In April I went to Sydney for Opera on the Harbor and on the train to Woy Woy I watched a guy rolling his own cigarettes. That was something I hadn't seen for quite some time and it got me thinking.
16 April 2015
Seasoned fingers
ease the brown strands
along a thin rectangle of
white paper,
packing,
smoothing,
tapering,
bedding down, ready
to rotate between thumb and forefinger and,
with slow glide across
moist tongue,
seal
with a loving kiss
of
death.
During the mid-year school holidays I met Lisa, Griffin and Essi in the city. As we emerged from Flinders Street Station I saw three men in the space of less than a minute who inspired this poem.
June 2015
Under the clocks
overlooked by time
three strangers
chance upon a moment in my life
and a surge of sadness takes me
unawares.
Did you know that the human being is the only species on earth that cries?
The man lying on the pavement
behind haunted eyes and gaunt
stubbled face
has slept and woken here
and will sleep again
and wake
and not escape the nightmare of
his dreams.
The man behind unseeing eyes
prods his way in proud
determination
to seem undaunted by the danger and
blackness of his world.
The man locked into the prison of
his powerlessness
to move or speak
writhes
in the twisted futility of his
seething energy.
Three strangers
overlooked by time
under the clocks.
A couple of days ago I was in the arcade at Toorak with Essi while Lisa was in a shop. A woman caught Essi's eye and stopped. We got into conversation and she suddenly burst into tears and said that her 39 year old son had died last week catching an infection in hospital.
Instinctively I gave her a big hug. I told Lisa about is and she suggested we both write a poem about it. This is what I wrote.
16 July 2015
She stopped
enchanted by the little boy,
his bright 'hello',
his smile,
his big red balloon.
"Hello" she said, "Your grandson?
Beautiful."
A surge of tears filled her eyes.
"My son died last week."
Suddenly
she was no stranger.
I wrapped her in my arms
in a silent bond
of grief.
As she left
she looked at the little boy
and the balloon
and somehow
through the tears
she smiled.
******
* * * * *
In The Age yesterday there was a story with the headline
Donor Children fight for ‘truth’
Today Victoria is the only Australian State with a functioning donor register to ensure that children can later seek information about their origins. However this does not apply to people born before 1988.
Those born between 1988 and 1997 have the right to access information if the donor agrees, and only those born after 1997 have an absolute right to information.
Melbourne woman, Lauren Burns, 26, is among dozens of donor-conceived people who have made submissions to a Senate Inquiry into donor conception in Australia.
She has called for national legislation to establish a compulsory national donor register, in a submission supported by many groups including fertility specialists, counsellors and parents who have conceived using donor sperm or eggs.
Controversially she calls for legislation to be retrospective identifying information about men who donated sperm anonymously under the old system!
At 26 Lauren Burns wants to know who she really is. So far she knows her father was a vial of frozen sperm labelled C11!
17 August 2010
She was conceived with
donor sperm.
Five years ago her mother gave her the news –
a twenty first birthday
surprise.
Now she wants to know more about a vial
of frozen sperm labelled
C11 –
more about her father.
The sperm provider has a legal right to
anonymity.
He wants to know nothing
of the many lives he has
‘fathered’.
They are a gift, without
obligation.
That’s the deal.
She has a natural right to know the identity
of the man responsible
for her gift
of life.
Responsible!
For him responsibility ends in the
giving,
until, perhaps, his instincts prompt
an urge to recognise what he has helped
create.
The law protects the secret
until, perhaps, the right to know
outweighs the right to
privacy.
Meanwhile a daughter agonises
over age-old questions of
origin and
identity.
-
How far we have come –
or gone.
I have been regularly dipping into Portrait of a Friendship – Letters of Barbara Blackman and Judith Wright 1950 – 2000.
They both write so beautifully in very different waysI revelled in Barbara’s autobiographical Glass after Glass and have enjoyed a recent exchange of letters and writings with her. I saw her at ANAM just the other day and had a chat. She seemed pleased to ‘see’ me.
The exchange of letters between these two remarkable people is a real treasure trove with so many delicious descriptions and turns of phrase. Yesterday I read a letter Barbara wrote on 4 July 1975 which included this observation:
Charles seems much more at one with himself, which isn’t to say that he isn’t terribly restless, doing all sorts of runabout busy things rather than get quietly down to painting.
I am rendering the great gesture of assistance in having taken delivery of some twenty tea chests to help clear his studio and am unstowing their cargo from Pre-Paris packing, which involves all we have kept and stored for ever, all those old photographs that roll round one’s life and surface just every seven years or so.
How terribly young we were when we were young.
That final sentence struck a chord with me and I couldn’t get it out of my head.
So I wrote a poem!
15 September 2010
Inventing our own worlds in air raid shelters;
billy-carting all round Fawkner Park;
laughing, crying, gasping at Wirth’s Circus
and hiding under bed clothes in the dark.
Luna Park slides, penny tram rides.
How terribly young we were when we were young .
Playing down the bend and catching yabbies;
playing battington or grab or bobs;
shadow plays for threepence on the verandah
and every sip sip sip of Mrs Obbs.
Bags of lollies, teddies, gollies.
How terribly young we were when we were young.
Bicycling to Queenscliff or the You Yangs;
British bulldog, flying home-made kites;
midnight feasts and birthday study parties
and listening to crystal sets at night.
Loaves and fishes’, ‘Nunc Dimittis’.
How terribly young we were when we were young .
Cooking jaffles round the winter fire;
being all devout in Sunday suits;
blubbing at heroic schoolboy stories
and nailing stops into our football boots.
Cricket, sailing: passing, failing.
How terribly young we were when we were young.
Salad days at College in the fifties;
programme dances at the College Ball;
passionate embraces before curfew
and playing bowls outside the Dining Hall.
So witty and clever, the best intake ever.
How terribly young we were when we were young.
Tennis days and all-night New Year parties;
playing cricket almost everywhere;
halcyon days in London and in Oxford;
rapturous without a single care.
Night Clubs in Soho, waking just so so!
Oh how terribly young we were.
It couldn’t last for ever,
we moved past our prime;
the cause of the problem
was Old Father Time.
We started to realise
the song had been sung
and how terribly young we were
when we were young.
One of my major preoccupations over the last three years has been my research into the identity of PIP, mounting the exhibition in November last year when Dick and I shared the walls of Kinross House with the paintings of Pip alias James Somerset Butler alias James McMillan Carrick and reuniting Pip’s daughter and grand daughter with cousins they didn’t know existed.
It has certainly been a fascinating process made all the more interesting by the different reactions of two op Pip’s daughters who are living in Australia. Madeleine who came to lunch here with her daughter.
Ruth, is delighted with what has happened and is thrilled to meet Peggie who is Pip’s sister’s daughter. She was also thrilled to see all the paintings we have had restored and framed and which were part of the exhibition.
She generously sent me one of her father’s miniatures signed James Somerset Butler. Madeleine’s younger sister, Rose, lives in Sydney and does not want to be unsettled by any of these revelations. She wants things to be the way she has always understood them to be.
These two polarised responses prompted me to write this poem – Two Daughters: Two Truths.
26 September 2010
Both girls grew up believing in their father - born in
Scotland, son of a Countess, descendant of
Robert the Bruce,
veteran of the Boer War and the Western Front,
artist, writer, raconteur, a man of
charm and charisma – and imagination.
A complex man, he called himself simply
PIP.
Ninety years on as his paintings emerged, so too did his
real story.
He was born in Melbourne, his mother was
no Countess, his name was
James McMillan Carrick and he had never been
to South Africa.
In 1915 he had enlisted as
James Somerset Butler – a pretence he maintained
all his long life,
living in England after the war and
never acknowledging his brother and sisters
in Australia.
When the truth was told
one daughter embraced it and her lost Australian cousins
with joy and delight revelling
in this enriching dimension to the closing years
of her life.
The younger daughter, disillusioned and stunned, shunned
the news as a denial
of all she thought herself to be – her memories,
identity, the very essence
of her sense of
self.
We face truth in our own way
and so create our own
reality.
From time to time over the last forty years I have dabbled in trying to write sonnets. Several years ago when Anne’s mother was in a Nursing Home and we got to know ‘life’ at Carnsworth I explored this structure again reflecting on this last stage of man’s ‘eventful history’.
The other day I unearthed a draft and did a bit more work on it. The result is On Growing Too Old – a not-very-happy observation on the desperate destiny that many face.
As I thought about this I was reminded of the short poem by Walter Savage Landor (1775 – 1864) that the Bechervaise Family quoted in their farewell to John Bechervaise which Landor called On His Seventy-fifth Birthday:
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art I warmed both hands before the fire of Life It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
I then found this little poem on the same theme as On Growing Too Old which Landor called On Living Too Long. Such is life!
Is it not better at an early hour In its calm cell to rest the weary head, While birds are singing and while blooms the bower, Than sit the fire out and go starv’d to bed?
28 September 2010
When memory deserts the failing mind
and leaves it drifting in a timeless now;
when ear is deaf, tongue mute and eye is blind,
oblivious to the blessings that endow
a life of meaning, purpose, even joy;
when fingers, bent and tortured, pluck at threads
of blanket ends, and falteringly toy
with tired patchwork shrouding tired beds;
when slippered feet scrape cold linoleum floor
in futile quest beneath a quivering frame,
and nothing comes of nothing, nothing more
for mindless players in a senseless game;
when living has no life but shallow breath
God grant me the release of gentle death.
Last Saturday evening I attended the Charles Nodrum Gallery in Richmond as guest of Frank and Gail Billson. We were in Trinity College together and he had invited a number of our contemporaries. Frank and I were in The Provoked Wife and Hassan together.
In the course of the evening Mary Newsome gave me a copy of the Hassan programme – a production in the Union Theatre in May 1955. I recognised over 50 of the names listed and could put a face to all of them. What a talented lot they were and what careers they had.
I read again James Elroy Flecker’s poem
The Golden Journey to Samarkand
We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go Always a little further: it may be
Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow, Across the angry or that glimmering sea,
White on a throne or guarded in a cave There lives a prophet who can understand Why men were born: but surely we are brave, Who take the Golden Road to Samarkand.
Sweet to ride forth at evening from the wells When shadows pass gigantic on the sand, And softly through the silence beat the bells Along the Golden Road to Samarkand.
We travel not for trafficking alone; By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned: For lust of knowing what should not be known We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.
And I wrote my own poem.
27 October 2010
The faded pages had been loosely folded
and set aside in memory’s
bottom drawer.
Now,
in the dwindling light of late afternoon, old friends gather,
reunited,
unburdened by busy ambition,
resting easy.
“Hassan” she said, handing me the pages,
“Remember?”
“Hassan, of course.” I eased open the programme,
a time capsule
enticing me back to dramatic undergraduate days -
Trinity College,
1955.
Eagerly I scanned the names, and fresh young faces
sharpened into focus
beckoning me to defy the years and
share again the
Golden Road.
What a pilgrimage it has been – and in what company:
scholars, scientists, surgeons,
architects and engineers,
philosophers, poets, professors and priests,
makers of music, painters of pictures,
ambassadors, judges, teachers,
philanthropists.
A privileged cast of pilgrims, givers of their gifts,
who set out together on the
Golden Road
and realized their own vision
of Samarkand.
Last week warmer days beckoned us twice to the Ian Potter Children’s Garden in the Royal Botanic Gardens where The Magic Pudding sculpture by Louis Laumen, inspired by Norman Lindsay’s illustrations of his Children’s Classic, is the centrepiece.
Bunyip Bluegum, Bill Barnacle, Sam Sawnoff and the skinny Magic Pudding, Albert, are all there. The garden is beautifully designed with water being the strong feature.
Griffin loved his adventures in and around the water spouts that suddenly jet out of the ground creating plenty of cool hilarity for the very young. It is a Mecca for young families – and it’s grandparent-friendly.
1 November 2010
Jets of water spurt and arc in silver loops
intertwining
unravelling
glittering
cascading
bouncing
disintegrating.
Little children hide and seek
dash and splash
squirt
squeal
sway and dance
in abandoned delight.
Under the spell of the magic garden
the joy of the water babies
knows no bounds.
Every Thursday I catch the 9.01 tram from Stop 35 in Malvern Road to take me to Painting Class. Many of the passengers are regulars engaged in their own routines, like me. The front seat is almost always taken by the same pair. They disembark at Glenferrie Road.
4 November 2010
They are there again today seated close
at the front of the tram,
silent, still,
alert.
The bond between them is
unmistakable.
He gently touches her coat
with finger
tips.
Her response, almost imperceptible,
is palpable –
affectionate, knowing,
ready.
A fuse of energy is generated along the lead that links them –
latent, potent,
poised.
A thin white cane rests by his side –
a second lifeline.
I don’t feel pity – more a sense of reverence
in the presence of such
acceptance, trust,
serenity -
a sixth sense beyond my capacity
to see.
Still Point really follows on from thinking about My Threadbare Art and the desire to find words that get to the essence of things – the heart of the matter. I guess I'm not the first person to try to do that.
17 November 2010
Somewhere deep in our destiny
there’s a dimension
no microscope has power to penetrate,
no telescope has strength to see –
a dimension without which
we are unimaginable.
No sense can make it tangible;
nothing tangible can make it sense.
It is the still point around which
we revolve and
have our being.
It is utterly and infinitely central.
Some might call it conscience,
the essence of self,
the whisper of the soul,
depth, destiny,
purpose, meaning,
mystery.
Some might call it God.
Why try to find a label?
Why try to tie it down?
By definition it is beyond our grasp because
it is beyond our reach –
but it has to be there.
Without it our world would not
turn.
* I was delighted that Richard Randerson chose to include this poem in his memoir 'Slipping the Moorings' which was published in 2015
Today as I headed off to painting class and stood at the tram stop I looked across to where the bulldozers were at work where once stood a little house where an old man spent several hours of each day standing at his front gate chatting to the passers-by.
Thoughts came to mind which I put into this poem.
12 May 2011
A giant steel claw gouges another streaked swathe across the
orange clay
and drags the jettisoned debris
into forlorn heaps
of rubble.
I stand at the tram stop opposite
and see again the little house wedged between the bookends of
a changing world –
and there is old Nick leaning on the front gate
just as his father did,
and his grandfather.
He chats to all the passers-by –
a ready smile, a cheerful word
about the weather or the way
of the world.
Old Nick was a character,
an institution,
a legend –
and when he went
the bulldozers moved in and destroyed,
in a few mangling minutes,
what generations had lovingly created.
The loaded truck lurches out into the
busy road
as the yellow man
swivels his circular sign
from ‘slow’ to
‘stop’.
I wish!
Yesterday I walked into a very swish Port Douglas resort off Macrossan Street boasting all the attractions demanded by the wealthy tourist. Just behind the resort I saw a cluster of aborigines in front of a rusty old shed where they presumably have their ‘home’.
They were not in good shape. The contrast was staggering and prompted this poem.
9 July 2011
Sparkling pools seduce the easy tourists
immersed in the delights of their
tropical paradise.
Bikinied beauties and young bucks,
middle aged spreaders and devoted seniors –
all respond to the delicious warmth
where time and money are happily dissipated
without constraint.
Chilled cocktails complement the succulence
of the seafare
where all is abundantly well.
A minute and eternity away
beside a rusted shed and scattered old machinery
a darker scene plays out.
With addled brains and utter mindlessness
they sprawl about on reject chairs and sofas
incongruously furnishing the scene.
With nothing left to lose they swig their booze,
escaping to the demons of the deep,
and drowning in the refuse-riddled sea –
derelict jetsam
long since cast aside.
An embarrassment.
Just five days after my New Year Reflection I wrote these lines knowing that I was having to deal with 'sickness and dying'. Anne died on 21 January and my daughter in law, Claire, read these words at the Celebration of Anne's life on 28 January.
5 January 2012
In the midst of life’s endless movement let me
be still;
in the midst of life’s constant noise let me
be silent;
in the midst of life’s strain and stress let me
be calm;
in the midst of life’s uncertainty and doubt let me
be true;
in the midst of life’s sickness and dying let me
be strong;
in the midst of life let me
be.
Early in 2013 I organised a Reunion Lunch for staff who were teaching at Geelong Grammar School before 1976. Over 50 came and it was a very special occasion that meant a great deal to everyone. I wrote this poem afterwards.
March 2013
What was it that we shared so long
and short ago
that tugged us back together
fleetingly
across the years
to tell and show and know
that something utterly defining
happened there?
What was it then? A spirit certainly,
a sense that we belonged,
inspired as we were by youth –
our own and theirs –
the young with whom we worked
who kept us young
in heart and
head.
An easy reuniting, defying years,
at one
together.
On the first night after returning home from 23 days of hospital and rehab, I wrote this little poem.
1 December 2013
Beyond the familiar furnishings of my room
and mind,
confines of
security and domesticity;
beyond the windows blurred with the year's
smears of
good intentions
too long
delayed;
beyond the paling fence, confident and strong
but weathering
already;
beyond the red brick wall
deceptive in its solid
certainty;
beyond the tiles of neighbouring rooves
mossed with ageing,
mortar crumbling;
beyond the loopy lines of
sagging wires;
beyond the looming shapes merging at the edge
of the world;
beyond the doubt and fear so
near and palpable -
I see the light - the marvellous light -
and the light
will
prevail.
In early April this year I spent a few days in Sydney. As I walked up to the Art Gallery of NSW it started to rain and I took refuge in St Mary's Cathedral. While seated there I took notes as a basis for a poem which I have worked on from time to time since then.
While it should still be regarded as work in progress it is time to process the words and see how they look/sense how they feel.
31 August 2014
I enter the cathedral
a welcome refuge from the driving rain,
my flimsy brolly futile in the circumstances,
and soggy road-map dangerously limp.
I settle quietly in an obscure pew. Some kneel religiously
mouthing words,
a ritual to appease the gods perhaps
or maybe springing from a deeper source of
pain or grief,
remorse or gratitude.
They all seek solace of some kind -
blessing, comfort, strength,
promise of redemption, the will to carry on,
peace -
Who knows?
I wonder at their faith, their seeming
certainty.
Others simply sit,
absorb the beauty, history, atmosphere,
the sense of something more,
the stillness.
Too soon the spell is broken
by bells
and busy feet.
I place a lighted candle in the sand
and stand awhile ,
memory's shadows dancing
hauntingly.
The rain has stopped and I consult my map.
It is a little stronger at the edges now
and I am
grateful.
On New Year's Eve I quickly decided I was too old to make resolutions - so I wrote about some New Year's Disillusions instead!
1 January 2015
'What do you do...........?'
What do you do when you go to the gate
and the newspaper's under the car?
What do you do with the gherkins and jam
when you simply can't unscrew the jar?
What do you do at the end of the day
when you deal with your ailments and ills
and you try to think clearly but can't quite remember
if you have or have not had your pills?
What do you do when you start out to speak
and forget what you wanted to say?
What do you do when you fill up with gas
and drive off forgetting to pay?
What do you do in a bit of a crowd
when you can't hear a word that is said?
What do you do when most of your friends
are decrepit or dying or dead?
What do you do when you're wanting to read
and your glasses just cannot be found?
What do you do when your grandson demands
that you play and you sit on the ground?
What do you do when you get to the car
and you find that you've locked in the key?
What do you do when the hip pain gets worse
and the ache never stops in your knee?
What do you do when you answer the phone
and you can't understand what they say?
What do you do when you've showered and you've dressed
and you don't know the date or the day?
What do you do at the hole in the wall
when you don't know which buttons to press?
What do you do when you visit a friend
and forget both their name and address?
What do you do when it's time to check out
and you enter your credit card in
to the little machine and suddenly know
that you can't now remember your pin?
What do you do when you mislay your specs
and you find them on top of your head?
What do you do when you're reading a book
and forget every word that you've read?
-
What do you do? Well if I were you,
to cut back your problems by half,
there's nowhere to hide, just swallow your pride -
there's no point in crying - just laugh.
On 4 June I attended painting class as usual and was moved to hear two members of the group talking about their grandchildren. John Robinson was rejoicing in the fact that his grandson had been selected in his first AFL game for the Sydney Swans.
Colin Peel shared the sad news that his first grand daughter had died after just three days of life. On returning home that day I couldn't get this juxtaposition out of my mind and I wrote a poem.
4 June 2015
I shook his hand.
"Over the moon," he said, eyes twinkling, unable to contain his
proud delight.
His grandson's first game with The Swans,
"A natural," they said, "he just belongs."
John's painting had a brighter glow today,
with bolder colour and strong
reflected light.
I hugged him close.
"Thank you," he said, eyes dulled by days of
desolation.
His first grandchild - a girl, a gift,
a miracle .
Yet three days later
they turned off life support and
that was that -
the end -
and the beginning
of a long, cold road
and dark.
Most of us are grandparents. Chance brought us together
to paint
and share a little of our lives -
and lives we've helped to shape
and now shape ours.
Delight. Despair. The dice of destiny.
'Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.'
The theme of this term's painting course is Landscape Icons and we are concentrating on cloud formations, sea and land forms. For much of last week I was on the Sunshine Coast so this gave me opportunity to observe, think, write and draw on the themes of clouds and waves.
Part of this process involved writing a poem for which I took the first two lines of Shakespeare's Sonnet 60 as a starting - and finishing - point.
1 August 2015
Far from the shore
a shadow line etches
across the vast surface of
the sea.
Darker now,
it swells and arches,
imperious,
in a powerful moment of
suspended time.
Too soon, white-tipped, it curls and crashes
in a bouncing flurry of swirling
foam and spray,
battling the broken waves
already receding.
And so it is received again
into the depths that gave it meaning
and moment
in the eternal cycle of
time and tide.
'Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore
so do our minutes hasten to their end.'
I am now visiting Don Marles fairly regularly to offer a little relief as he cares for Fay. This week we were talking about our careers and the fact that we chose to be teachers and that's what we did, and expected to do, for 40 years.
I turned to Fay and said that her working life was much more varied than ours to which she replied "What did I do?"
14 August 2015
"What did I do?" she asks,
oblivious now to all that's gone before.
For us this twilight seems a shadowland of
sadness and despair
but what is there to cast a shadow
in a mind where memory has been
forgotten
and now knows nothing of the now that's gone
or the now about
to be?
Featureless and flat
a landscape casts no shadows,
no sunlit peaks of joy,
no dark valleys knowing what
must be.
She is free
and we
languish
in the bondage of
our grief.
One of the devastating themes of September has been the Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child Abuse and the two weeks hearing in relation to Geelong Grammar School. It has been devastating at various levels.
John Buckley, who has just been sentenced to six and a half years gaol for child abuse in the late 1970s and early 1980s, was a friend of mine at Corio in the 1960s and early 1970s. Other offenders were colleagues and friends at Corio during my time there.
The other day when I parked outside Victoria House to have an X ray I found myself opposite John Buckley's house in Bendigo Street. That coincidence led me to write the following.
15 September 2015
They were my friends, we shared so much,
except, it seems,
the truth.
I park my car across the street
from where one lived -
and may again, perhaps,
if he survives.
Paedophiles are not popular with other
prisoners.
The familiar facade is faded now:
cracks long-hidden emerge beneath the
peeling paint
and the blue door, once so bright
and welcoming,
is stained and
smeared.
Inside it is dark
and cold
and still.
No clock ticks.
I drive away into the
busy day
haunted by the betrayal
that lies behind
he blue door.
******
* * * * *
One of the best recent developments in Melbourne is the establishment of the Wheeler Centre for Literature. At the end of July I attended the Capital Theatre for a conversation between Jennifer Byrne and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
I had read both Infidel and Nomad and was inspired by the books and the interview. What a remarkable woman she is.
10 August 2010
My admiration is unbounded for this young woman and
the extraordinary journey she has made –
is making – Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Kenya,
Holland, America.
Now she is here to share her deep commitment
chiselled by experience, intelligence, will and
courage beyond measure.
She is elegant, serene, with a powerful
stillness –
the eye of the storm –
and a rich, passionate eloquence.
For Ayaan Hirsi Ali the roads diverged when she defied her father
and an arranged marriage.
She took the road less travelled:
a different life beckoned.
Her destiny was sealed in the twisted rubble of the twin towers
and she turned her back on
Islam.
Infidel and nomad, traitor and prophet,
outspoken critic of
bigoted fundamentalism, she risks her life
every moment of every day in the cause of
truth and justice.
In a letter to her unborn daughter she identifies
a trinity of values central to her
journey of freedom:
take responsibility – for actions, successes and failures;
fulfil your duty – there are things we must do;
think critically – read, listen, analyse, distinguish between
dogma and enlightenment.
And beware the pitfalls of resentment –
whatever the odds avoid self-pity, grasp your
destiny and don’t reward your persecutors.
It has been said that the three most beautiful words in the
language of secular resistance to
tyranny are
Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Yesterday on the way to an illustrated tour round France with Ian Guthridge I called in to the Arts Centre to see the Exhibition SIGHT AND SOUND – Music and Abstraction in Australian Art. The exhibition
explores the creative intersections between music and abstraction in Australian Art from the early twentieth century to contemporary practice….
The exhibition focuses on the work of eight artists: John Aslanidis, Yvonne Audette, Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, Roger Kemp, Donald Laycock, Roy de Maistre and Robert Owen.
My key interest was, of course, Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack who JR Darling, Headmaster of Geelong Grammar School, managed to have liberated from the internment camp in 1942 in order to appoint him Art Master at Corio.
He had been interned at Hay and Orange in NSW and at Tatura in Victoria.
While Hirsch taught us art when we reached the senior school the exhibition reminded me of my early days in Barwon House in 1946 when Hirsch taught us to make musical instruments which we then played in a band accompanied and conducted by the accordion-playing maistro from Frankfurt sitting at his podium bringing up the colour symbols indicating which of the four sides of our stringed instrument we should strum!
22 August 201
Cylindrical shapes and shades of yellows and reds
evoke a dramatic sense of
Zieh Harmonika Spieler –
a watercolour by Ludwig Hirschfeld
Mack.
In far off days he studied and taught at the renowned
Weimer Bauhaus and he played
the accordion.
In 1936,
refugee from the evils of rampant Nazism,
he fled to England, only to be labelled ‘enemy alien’ and become a
‘Dunera Boy’
and be incongruously and tragically interned in
outback Australia.
The travesty of such rough justice was exposed and soon
this talented, civilised man was teaching
once again.
So our paths crossed.
In Junior School in 1946, beside Limeburner’s Bay
where corvettes lay at anchor, monuments to
darker days,
we were touched by the unique qualities of the brilliant, humble
‘Hirsch’.
We fashioned instruments under his direction and
applied the colour codes.
Zieh Harmonika Spieler made his music and we
strummed our colourful chords in the
Barwon Bauhaus Band!
And now, next to the painting, the very instruments themselves
are on display,
and there is Hirsch’s podium at which he played
his accordion and gave his colour cues
all those years
ago.
Sights and sounds come flooding back
and I realise
how privileged
I have been.
Early in August I read that June Jago had died aged 82.
I remember very vividly some of the first plays I saw at The Comedy and Her Majesty’s (even His Majesty’s) in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and the actors who played in them: Robert Morley, Sophie Stewart, Ellis Irving, Googie Withers, John McCallum.
I particularly remember seeing See How They Run, the delightful farce by Philip King set in 1943. June Jago played the maid, Ida, and I thought she was a riot.
See How They Run was the first play I ever directed – Manifold House 1962 – so I remember all the cast including Peter Dennis as Penelope Toop (still the days of boys playing the female roles) and Tim Fairfax playing the Bishop of Lax (the part played by Frank Thring in the Melbourne production I saw in 1951!) I directed it again with Court House at Dean Close School in 1968, again with boys playing the women!
In both my productions I had vivid images of the 1951 production, particularly Ida played by June Jago.
26 August 2010
In 1951 she was the maid in one of the first plays
I ever saw.
How well I remember that classic, post-war farce
by Philip King set in the vicarage of
Merton-cum-Middlewick where
ineffective vicars and tipsy village spinsters,
parsonic visiting preachers and nasty Nazi
intruders,
pompous Bishops and dim-witted police
sergeants,
came and went and hid and got
confused –
and we laughed until the tears came tumbling
and Ida, the maid, added her
cockney cheek and chaos to the scene of
See How They Run.
June Jago played Ida with disarming
charm,
almost her first role in a sixty year career.
Her place in history was assured when, four years on,
she played the part of Olive Leech in
Lawler’s Doll,
touring London and New York, putting Australian theatre
on the map.
The MTC tribute simply said
‘a great actor and teacher’ when she died aged 82
a little while ago.
Farewell June Jago. I loved your Ida.
I saw your face and heard your voice
both times I revelled in the fun
of directing that
incomparable
farce.
The story of Mary Helen MacKillop (15.01.1842 – 08.08.1909) has seldom left the news spotlight over the last few months. Beatified in 1995 by Pope John Paul II, the Roman Catholic Church’s recognition of a second miracle attributed to her intercession was approved by Pope Benedict XVI in December 2009. Her canonisation took place in Rome last Sunday, 17 October, making Saint Mary of the Cross the first Australian Saint.
Whatever one’s views about The Roman Catholic Church, the Pope and miracles it is impossible to be cynical about Mary MacKillop herself and her extraordinary influence for good – which will now continue for ever.
21 October 2010
It began in a stable a long time ago:
there was no other room, so they
made do –
a rough enough start to the journey ahead,
the stuff of legend.
Inspiration.
Faced with censure, eviction, betrayal –
excommunication –
she never wavered in her mission
to educate poor children, give them
purpose, possibility,
hope.
Her faith took her to Rome –
twice –
extraordinary pilgrimages
separated by centuries.
The first saw her single-handedly win Papal approval
for the Sisters of Saint Joseph –
a strong, independent woman, with the will to find a way,
not given to taking ‘no’ for an answer
even from the Pope!
The second was a very different journey –
unique, spiritual,
of infinite consequence, culminating in
canonisation –
Saint Mary of the Cross –
a miraculous journey of love
that began in a stable
a long time
ago.
Recently President Obama visited India for the first time. His itinerary was influenced by his admiration for Mohandas Gandhi and he visited Gandhi’s modest former home in Mumbai.
An article in The Age on 8 November spoke of the postcard to which I refer in Heroic Voices - a postcard of Obama sitting in his old Senate Office beneath framed photographs of his political heroes – Abraham Lincoln, Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
19 November 2010
Perhaps we all have heroes who encapsulate for us a
special quality –
an aspiration, an ideal, a unique something
setting them apart.
They may inspire simple fantasy – a dream world
for escapist reveries
with little impact on our
daily lives.
Much more importantly the heroes that we choose
will serve to shape our actions
day by day
and influence the people
we become.
There is a postcard of Barack Obama
seated beneath photographs of
three great men -
his heroes.
The voice of each has echoed down the years
unsilenced by a mere
assassin’s bullet.
One spoke of government – of and by and for
the people;
one was the apostle of peace and
non-violent protest;
and one had a dream for all mankind.
Democracy, Peace, Equality –
ideals that must never be engulfed by
bigoted fundamentalism,
prejudice or
greed.
Three heroic voices inspire an
American President.
May his own voice long
be heard.
Last week Aung Sau Suu Kyi was released from house arrest and she now ‘enjoys’ a precarious freedom after being incarcerated for fifteen of the last twenty one years.
She has had honours heaped upon her by the international community and her release has been described as Burma’s ‘Mandela Moment’ comparing it to the day when Nelson Mandela walked free from prison. She is wary of the comparison but hopes that one day it may prove to be so.
She knows that change can only come from the people of Burma. At sixty five Sun Kyi’s inspiration to her country has been extraordinary. Who knows what triumphs or tragedies will be played out there over the next few years.
23 November 2010
She could have left the country and lived a
quiet life
in civilised exchange with
friends and family –
but this was not her way.
Burmese Independence was bought with
her father’s blood.
Her mission of a free democratic Burma
led to fifteen incarcerated years at the hands of the
military junta, junkies of
oppression and corruption.
Elegant, serene, with penetrating gaze,
iron will and matchless
courage,
she is not afraid although there is much
to fear.
In the year of her first arrest Nelson Mandela
was freed
and soon became his country’s
President.
Both were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize –
uncommon heroes in a
common cause.
Now Aung Sau Suu Kyi enjoys another
precarious freedom – poised
on the edge of
destiny.
In December 2010 I heard from Pat Creswell that Bill was not well and had moved to a nursing home. I did not see Bill between 1950 and June 1998.
It was only when an article appeared in 'The Canberra Times' about us when we were leaving Canberra that Bill realised I was there - and I realised he was there. We got together and kept in touch. When I heard the news about his moving to a nursing home I wrote this poem.
22 December 2010
"So there we are" she writes in stoic acceptance.
I look intently at the picture of the old man,
searching for the boy I knew
all those years ago - searching for
Billy!
First I heard his voice. He always called
from beyond the corrugated iron fence,
"Tim, can you come out and play?
Tim?"
and off we rode, except on Sundays,
down the bend in the Murrumbidgee, and
swam and swung on ropes and
climbed trees and caught yabbies:
happy childhood days in Hay - mindless of
war raging in other lands and
drought sucking the life out of the
desolate landscape.
I remember the dust storms, colossal whirlpools of
blinding, biting sand;
I remember droves of gaunt cattle driven to the
slaughter yards along the dirt road outside our
front gate;
I remember the locusts in swarms of frenzied flight and
masses of smashed sticky messes on
windows and car radiators;
I remember the river reduced to a trickle and
stopping its flow altogether for a powerful
powerless moment;
I remember the war's end on a glorious, carefree day of celebration
in the Main Street;
I remember the returning soldiers welcomed at the station by
Brass Bands and Mayors;
and I remember Billy.
Now his wife brings news he is in a
nursing home and sends his
photograph.
The light still shines bright in his
blue eyes.
"He has fond memories of his life in Hay
with you,"
she writes.
So there we are.
Today the last known combat veteran of World War 1 and the last surviving Anglo-Australian to have served in both world wars, Claude “Chuckles” Choules, died in a nursing home in Perth. He was 110. What a moment. I felt compelled to write about it and this was the result.
5 May 2011
He’s gone –
the very last survivor of that wasteful, wicked war
slipped away
today.
No longer can we look a veteran in the eye,
or touch his hand,
or hear his laugh.
Claude “Chuckles” Choules
has gone –
An ordinary man compelled to do
extraordinary things
(compelled by his own will at a
fibbing fifteen)
and made unique “because everyone else
has died.”
And so, at last, that war is peopled,
not by old men seeking to bridge the void
that separates them from their
stolen comrades,
but by fresh-faced men and women,
fun-loving, duty-bound,
living, giving,
crying,
dying;
and now –
now that he is gone,
they all live on into eternity,
defying time
forever
young.
The Age on Saturday 21 May advertised the viewing of the estate of Miriam and David Rich with the auction being conducted by Mossgreen Auctions at 4.00pm on Sunday 22 May. Anne and I went to the apartment on Sunday afternoon and greatly appreciated the collection.
I felt moved to write about it the next day.
23 May 2011
The spacious apartment is laden with the accumulation of
two long lives
well lived.
Delicate china, precious porcelain,
Persian rugs, paintings, silver, sculptures,
books and furniture –
each piece a work of art chosen with love
and an eye for beauty
and character.
Now the integrity of this unique collection
is about to be shattered under the
auctioneer’s hammer.
There’s something poignant about such a moment –
a sense of violation,
desecration,
disintegration.
And yet we know that nothing is permanent
as season gives way
to season.
What matters is the loving process shared
and the touching of the heart and
the soul.
I leave the apartment conscious of the long journey that
ended here –
a journey begun all those years ago
when two young people set about putting the pieces of their
shattered lives
together
as they faced the world
out of the hell
of the
holocaust.
In late May the ABC’s Australian Story was about Sabrina Wolanski (nee Haberman) and on the strength of her remarkable story I borrowed her autobiography Destined to Live from the library. It is the very moving story of this extraordinary survivor of the Holocaust.
I then penned this little piece.
15 June 2011
Trapped in the airless bunker beneath the rabbit hutch
clutching desperately to life,
it was just a matter of time before the
Gestapo came
In the photograph, determined not to betray
to her tormenters the
terror in her eyes,
she turned away,
only to be hurled into a cell,
a living hell,
before the morning’s
dying.
Yet somehow Sabrina Haberman did not die
and sixty years later in Berlin,
near the site of a more notorious bunker,
she spoke the unspeakable
for six million
dead.
‘It has been the lot of our people to confront the worst manifestation
of evil in human history, and yet our oppressors have perished and
we have survived.’
She spoke from the site of our greatest triumphs:
she spoke from the heart.
Inevitably in this part of the world I bump into contemporaries from school or university that sometimes I haven’t seen for many years. One fellow in particular that I see from time to time at the Hawksburn Shopping Centre prompted this little poem.
4 July 2011
He had it all and by comparison the rest of us were
merely players –
dull shadows beside his
bright star.
His blue eyes shone with penetrating gaze
seeing further, deeper, more intently
than our short-sightedness.
He moved with lithe agility, poised it seemed
to leap with lightning speed,
sleek, supple,
panther-like.
I saw him yesterday outside the supermarket,
his short steps faltering, afraid of falling,
vacant eyes fixed in a dull stare
far away.
And yet, as the afternoon light faded into evening,
I still saw the
bright star.
On 4 July I received an email from Tony Llewellyn-Jones soon after he finished the season of Much Ado About Nothing with Bell Shakespeare. I had mentioned that I had spoken to Barry McKimm, Jack McKimm’s son, at the Preston Symphony Orchestra Concert. Tony wrote:
I spoke with Barry McKimm a couple of weeks ago to ask after the whereabouts of Jack’s remains. Footscray General Cemetery. Last Monday I took said Euphonium and played a somewhat wobbly Last Post for Jack and Mary who are buried together.
Mary used to make me tea and sandwiches AFTER my occasional lesson with Jack at the North Melbourne Fire Station. Jack prepared me for one of my finest achievements at GGS – a Leaving Certificate Pass in Music on the Baritone and the Euphonium….
Apart from the sentimental value of doing such a thing, it enables me to complete one of those circles one carries through life and longs to close before it is too late.
The image of Tony at the cemetery and the idea of completing the circle prompted me to write a poem.
7 July 2011
A teacher spends a lifetime sowing seeds
in hopeful expectation that, taking root,
a healthy crop will grow and
be productive.
One such seed was sown when Jack McKimm inspired a small boy
to share the joy of
making music:
and now, nearly fifty years on, it’s time to say
‘thank you’.
So Tony makes his way to Footscray Cemetery
where Jack and Mary lie at rest
together,
and standing by their grave he pays his last respects –
the ends are tied: the circle is complete.
Those who were there that day
making their own pilgrimage of love and gratitude
stopped and listened
as the haunting strains of the Last Post
carried across the tombstones on the crisp morning breeze,
played with joy in the heart and a
tearful twinkle in the eye by
Tony on his
Euphonium.
With 11.11.11 not far away bringing the wedding of Rodney and Pearl at 11 on that day in Murrurundi I reflected on the date and the wedding.
17 October 2011
On this day so long and short ago
the guns fell silent, satisfied
that sixteen million dead were sacrifice enough
for now;
on this day an outlaw faced oblivion
only to become a legend in death,
such is life’s
irony;
on this day a Governor General dismissed
a Government: it was
time.
And now,
now, on this eleventh day
of the eleventh month
and year,
now at the very hour of eleven
we share this moment
in eternity –
linked in friendship,
bonded in joy,
confident in faith
that two lives will be united
in love and harmony
until time’s
end.
On 24 April 2014 Adrian Town died. I had been sending him regular emails since learning that he had the desperate motor neurone disease. Adrian was on the staff at CGS for the whole of my time there. On the day I heard that he had died I wrote this little poem.
24 April 2014
He's gone
released at last from the prison of his
stricken body
and its hellish
immobility,
utterly dependent,
breathing
death.
At last his agony is over;
at last his spirit is free.
Farewell brave soul,
may flights of angels sing you to your rest.
Incredibly in 2014 George Hyder died of motor neurone disease as well as Adrian Town. George was Maintenance Manager at CGS for the whole of my time there and we became great friends. In the week before he died I went to Canberra and visited him each day.
On one of those days I wrote this poem.
September 2014
HE lies marooned in the darkened room,
dependent,
dead-weight;
flimsy life-lines tease his nostrils;
his eyes moisten as words respond slowly to his
racing mind;
his hand inches over and rests
on mine.
SHE hovers quietly, alert, exhausted,
torn,
knowing she must hold on
and let go.
I prompt memories of
times shared,
moments of laughter,
comradeship and
creativity.
WE bond in silent acceptance of what is
and is to be
and see
that what has been
is still
for all
eternity.
This was the day of George's Memorial Service. As I was winging my way in the other direction towards Adelaide I was thinking about how events would unfold in Canberra that afternoon and I penned the following in my diary.
14 October 2014
A big man, George,
big frame,
big heart
exuding warmth and
generosity.
His smile was big and beamed across his
ruddy face, friendly,
mischievous.
A proud man, George,
with no pretence,
who saw through sham and
self-aggrandizement.
A skilled man, George,
who loved and fashioned wood,
a master of his craft,
perfectionist.
A good man, George,
a friend both wise and true
and sentimental too
and no less vulnerable
than the rest of us.
A good man,
George.
The theme of this term's painting class was 'In the steps of the Australian Impressionists'. Colin Johnson, our teacher, asked us to select our favourite impressionist painting and prepare a short presentation explaining our choice.
I chose Arthur Streeton's iconic painting 'Fire's On'. I read Arthur Streeton's letter to Frederick McCubbin describing his painting experience in the Blue Mountains from September to December 1891 and I wrote a poem incorporating many of Streeton's images and descriptions.
This is the poem.
June 2015
He rises with the sun and soon
his bare white limbs tingle with warmth in the pure
morning light
as he stands on mossy sandstone rock,
locked in wonder and delight
and sense of intimate oneness with the
dewy forest,
the birds that chirp and whistle,
the tall red gums so smooth of trunk
as though cast in iron,
and so many flowers in best array.
The virgin brook with rocky bottom rushes,
tumbling and tickling,
as he splashes and revels
in a cascade of
crystal delight.
Laden with lunch and paints and
puffing on his pipe
he climbs through steep canyon where big men
toil in the boiling sun
and cut through the vast hill of
bright sandstone,
and walls of rock run high
crowned by gums, bronze green,
under the deep blue dome
of heaven.
A crow glides,
a black dot in the distance,
piercing the air with
melancholy cry, long drawn,
like the breath of a dying sheep.
The tunnel entrance gapes like a great
dragon's mouth.
The rock is a perfect blazing glory of
white, orange, cream
and streaks of blue
beneath the flood of
shimmering sunlight -
deep gold.
He paints.
'Fire's on!'
The cry shatters the stillness and men scatter
helter skelter seeking shelter.
A deep hush -
then a boom of thunder shaking the earth
and echoing through the hills,
dying away with the crashing of rock
and thick clouds
of dust.
Death comes that day -and birth -
the birth of a work of art
where man is dwarfed by the might
of the great Australian bush and the fierce
summer light.
'Fire's on!'
********