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Thylazine: The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature                                                                                                                                     #10/thyla10c THE POETRY OF CONNIE BARBER Selected by Coral Hull [Above] Photo of Connie Barber by Ponch Hawkes, 2002. "In this season of light and dark, a cyclic round renews ocean's unseen nourishment from underwater pasture, root, leaf, flower." I FACING SOUTH I A CELEBRATION OF RAVENS I IMMIGRANT ASYLUM REFUGEE I THOSE MYSTERIOUS INVASIONS I THIS SILENT SEA I POINT OF BALANCE I WESTERNPORT I EDGE EQUINOX I MESSENGER IN THE WILDERNESS COMING INTO A GARDEN I THE EDGE OF THE LAND I INTRODUCED FROM ANOTHER COUNTRY TO SAVE SOULS I SALT AND SUGAR I THE FIRST OF JUNE I THE FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT I A GOOD BUTTERFLY DAY I TOWER HILL WARRNAMBOOL I SHARDS I BLOWFLIES SINGING I FACING SOUTH Shadows spread forward from a sun behind the rising dune; ahead, between headlands, the great ocean, driven from the pole, washes in, retreats; pulsing in its subject motion defines the littoral: shifting the edge of habit. Here one wakes to cock crow, magpies' strut, to ground alive with spiders, worms, and snails. Weeds stripped, the earth turned; cockatoos cry into sunset. A CELEBRATION OF RAVENS The ravens have returned from their secret summer calling in winter. A week before the solstice proclaim their boundaries from the elm. The houses know they have come back, the roads, footpaths, the creek's cliffs, the winter trees: alien trees that lose leaves, let storm slip through rigid limbs. The ravens breed in trees that face lightning, wind, that bend with storm. Dark interpreters of light, they shine in the sun, grasp their habitation with dragon claws, illuminate the morning, return to their old country with declining light, where the sun rules. Messengers from another continent, you know us. We know your trees, houses, roads, the creekıs cliffs shining purple basalt once a blood-red river. IMMIGRANT ASYLUM REFUGEE In the 1860's the Acclimatisation Society imported English animals and birds, blackbirds in particular, to improve the moral tone and uplift the soul of the people Outside my house stairs shelter a resident brought to improve the tone, to uplift the soul of a benighted people in a benighted land, their glorious song the source of moral worth. Territorial, aggressive, they chase everything with wings and beaks away from their ground. Carry a pole: a committee's direction for walking through foreshore in the spring. Poke out the nests three or four metres above ground; easy to recognise. Let native birds breed, sing, colour the day. Here she has built her perfect architecture on the hoya: bark foundation, pine walls, grass in the cup. Going upstairs I look up to the hemisphere, going down see the soft hollow of birth. I could pick up this perfect nest centimetres from the stair rail. She found the place in my absence. The nest is empty. She has abandoned it. I go upstairs and down, bang doors, up and down again. Next day an egg. Too busy then to consider the morality of letting a blackbird breed, and the egg is alone. The next day two eggs. Her tail sticks up like a Kennett shard, her head sunk in grass. You do not look wild animals in the eye, hers is towards me. A light at night close above her. She is there. She has gone. Another egg. I could put them in the bin. She would lay more. I could pull out the nest. She will build another. I could wait for live chicks to sing their not yet moral song. And the honeyeaters, the white plumed greenies that sing and dance through leaves at the end of winter no longer breed here. Blackbirds and cats have seen to that. The greenies take refuge far away. By Christmas the hoya will spread exotic scent around the nest and the blackbird will take note and will remember. No longer immigrant she has asylum in my garden and my immigrant soul will follow the greenies into a bewildering advent. Published in Southerly (Australia). THOSE MYSTERIOUS INVASIONS Mice on the stairs, small claws scattering, an army of mice, before the tin roof sings drops and random drums. Gutters' single notes turn to an orchestra of rain; and the smell, nothing so tender, so powerful: the whole house front to back, upstairs to down impregnated with the scent of breaking drought by the angel of a million scattering feet. Published in Overland (Australia). THIS SILENT SEA Mares tails swing from the east across the firmament sweep half the sky Heat encompasses the city caution   fear   survival   in heaviness beyond bearing North wind flattens water to clear green glass danger in this solitary time This could be the last time to swim in gentle sea the first hour of the flood It speaks quietly of deep secrecy holds kelp and fish scattering at a breaking edge POINT OF BALANCE A quiet time nudging the old into another season. A pause in the blood, a slant in the eye questions the tilt of the future; wind and ocean cycle their spiraling rhythm. Day a knife rubbing skin. Late sun hot above the tree burns through windows open to the west. Leaves talk wind, shimmering. Surf in the east shouts southerly blown against its rim, calls evening up its sand; roughly calling up the night moon. When leaves lie dark and still across its face, the water falls, whispers ebb into morning to rise with the sun repeat and repeat not weighing possibilities. You learn about loss, balance scales, hear animals call for mating, cicadas urgent for another season. WESTERNPORT 1. The View South The suit and tie, slightly overfed, sedentary, shabby in a satisfied suburban way bridles at the mention: Melbourne, he says, does not think much of Westernport. Indeed, why should the city care for sea grass beds, fish nurseries, molluscs older than the island or the bay. The suit has a clean house, air-conditioning ducted heating, security doors, locks and a reliable alarm. Beyond his fence suburbs reach into the catchment, provide run off held for years in the bay's slow tides, its circular currents. 2. Looking East Across the water, wind, breakers and storm, Embrace the island where tides hide lamp shells breeding as they did in Cambrian, Silurian, Devonian time: three hundred million years of life the suit does not think much of behind his fool-proof door. EDGE I In the mouth of the river wind lifts rising water: the sea speaks. Muffling snow invades the high country. Here the sea leaves offerings on the land: torn weed, old sea grass, embryos, skeletons, grit washed from another edge and ash solute in the world's flow. Each border building higher on itself. High cloud, different winds, bring soundless snow to the mountains, a year's water for the land. Here the wind, cold and sharp as hail and the inexorable sea's voice assault the shore, cut water to fragments, leave samplers: drowned birds, shearwater's legs bluer than the sky, the delicate curve of the egret's golden bill, dark cormorant, smokey petrel, driven to the edge, founding new land. II This day walking a clean shore I can whisper to the sea, hear a reply. It has covered its gifts with storm. The river turns against our barriers: red gum pillars, iron bolts, to flow east with the earth's spin eating the border of confinement. The morning people of the shoreline exchange greetings, talk of the storm, of rhythms that silence life, verify that soul inhering in the sea, the land, the earth's wind. EQUINOX Grass from summer flowering fields that sheltered spawn, fry, fingerlings for the future, where lamp shells breed out of that distant past before our eyes looked across the water, has shed its summer leaves, given them to the tide. Driven ashore, leaves heap thick and dark along the sand to populate the shore to a new depth, a new border between elements. In this season of light and dark, a cyclic round renews oceanıs unseen nourishment from underwater pasture, root, leaf, flower. MESSENGER IN THE WILDERNESS Down from the winter country's dark to these milder plains he calls his territory of light and air from the budding elm. He clambers through springy wood, balances as best he can clamps a tearing beak on live twigs, pulls against his weight The great bill tests growth needed to weave the future. You know the raven has come with the purpose of paradox. He knows death and living prey. He is ready to nourish a fugitive in the desert hearing the voice of silence from the dark interior, from mind and memory, to build a structure nearer to desire. A second bird joins the act. Her breeding voice like a white dove's stills him. Her soft purr fills the branches Her nurturing call will flow from a rough nest woven into a tree's high frame They take their conversation away to firmer footholds. They will build and call boundaries until her voice fails, the young fly. Pulled by an insistent need leave this easy air to spill calls through high mountains to echo across cold deserted plains and dangerous cliffs. Published in Sand (Five Islands Press, 2002). COMING INTO A GARDEN I will never make a garden here. We came to the worn earth too long ago; all energy turned to survival. The land turned in its own way. We put in seedling trees. Left to root in the resentful clay, for years they lived in winter wet and summer drought. The sun has looked on them. They have dried the thin soil that could have been remade for foreign fruit. Now trees stand in leaf litter, dust, native grass. Dry bark covers ground Where I might have planted an alien display. Trees follow their own season, bright in winter, pungent-sweet in summer, insects, animals, mating and breeding, gathering birds live in their shadow. Published in Sand (Five Islands Press, 2002). THE EDGE OF THE LAND In young trees wind sings The measure of margins we have laid On plots of land with surveyors pegs, Drains and gravel roads: An edge that hints at the rhythm Of another time choked By years of felling wattle, she-oak, banksia To fire the bread ovens of immigrants Back in the city; by years Of cattle trampling that could not Kill all the Weeping Grass. Among the grasses' whispering I reach for the lost song With seedlings. Casuarina Takes so long to grow, drooping Over its soft territory; Bursaria Is quick enough to whiten summer; Still the land is silent. Nearer the sea's reach Borderland Ti-tree, sand, ocean, Banksia and grey thrush Tell more than my narrow plot: Margins lived time out of mind, Time gone from those hands No longer here, no-one holding it. I stand in the scrubby wind Feel moving sound, a rhythm Bred by loss. Turn back To a small patch that might one day Carry my time into an unknown song. Published in Antipodes (USA). INTRODUCED FROM ANOTHER COUNTRY TO SAVE SOULS The Acclimatisation of Blackbirds His yellow beak probes. He scratches, Flings stuff around After compost worms. Digs up bulbs, seedlings. I spread wire. He digs holes. A finer mesh needed. Frustrated He works under the lemon tree. Prepares fiercely for spring. From the top of the hawthorn He can't reach the pendant fruit. Too busy to eat, guards territory; Repels every invader. Enough fruit there For the whole neighbourhood. A week and the tree is bare. He's digging between bricks, Exploits every crack, a dark Indweller, he intrudes by right. He'll last the winter, brilliantly Sing his mating from the elm tree, His unapologetic success. SALT AND SUGAR Days cloud-cold, dull, harbour Catchpenny conversation. Suddenly you smell summer Salt, seaweed, sugar gums. Wattle birds screech, Night possums huff, Thump the roof, Run to high trees. Koala, a toy by day, Lodged in hakea by the track, Roars to moony stars; At dawn a hump in the pine. Ravens keep their territory Calling in high gums. Summer is a hard time After breeding. Sweet, sweet, the smell of gums On the stinging air; The taste of wordless days Bitter, silent, salt. Published in Poetrix (Australia). THE FIRST OF JUNE Ravens call into silence, call their unknowing claim in the elm by the wall, beating wings rising and falling. I recall I've missed their morning voices since summer. Greenies bob like flowers, gold and green and white probing the last red fuchsias. The ravens rest, see all is well and call their security. Sick yellow leaves of the old year fall in the wind. Time begins again. The old goddess has woven a serpent from the wind, brooded their egg gently on the ocean. From its tumbling issue ravens fly in for mating, seal lifelong bonds among the roofs of the city The next day holds calling from the north across the railway. Calls frame bars of silence between the pair quartering the river. Calling, calling, they return on the solstice to their centre. Unnamed sun-time confirms their proprietary. The first snow clothes silent mountains, but the flat lands echo the calling of ravens from the Gulf to the Bight, from the treeless plain to the teeming Pacific. They have flown from Elysium near the pool of memory on dark wings and their eyes are pools of asphodel. Published in Enter Your House With Care (Denlynne Publications, 1996). THE FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT '..death spread to all men because all men sinned - sin indeed was in the world before the law was given ' Paul's letter to the Romans Chapter 5. The first swim after a cool summer: Transparent water, pure fish runs, Rock ways. I dive and flow Through bright sand rivers, The first power of the flow Lifts kelp. The first brambles: top black Sun berries full of tempered days. Royally stained, I gather enough to eat, to cook, to share. The first seeds of the Sweet Bursaria I planted as seed ten years ago. This line is thornless, incongruous. Anything so lovely should have thorns. The first time I have shed hours As long as memory. No coming, no going. All being In the path, growing, fading. Casual butterflies celebrate their span. Old Paul the Apostle, misanthropist, Obsessed, still argues old codes, Formulas and sanctions; always hankering After a different future, another present, Sin, death and the law his whole life As though the gift were not enough. A GOOD BUTTERFLY DAY Through banksia, over dunes, wind floats paper scraps. They stagger to sea. Their peculiar mateship repeated by another pair, another. They set towards the headland - an indistinct thickening of the horizon - or stumble into the next wave, return with the tide in a wash of weed and drowned wings. They could taking into account their boxing about the compass, fly straight to Antarctica. It must be All Butterflies' Day. But why fly to the drowning sea? On the way home you ignore curds hitting the windscreen. flakes wolfed by the grille. It is the end of summer. You think of fires and food, not of butterflies scattered like milk. Published in Budgerigah Flying (Abalone Press, 1989). TOWER HILL WARRNAMBOOL Firetails chirr you upwards through young trees. Below, an eagle swings her circle across water. You are elbow height with swifts and falcon. Across horizons of centuries the Bight silently laces dunes, brings in grey rain, This is the art buried by Katies and convenience stores at midnight. Our ingenuity will outshine Katy: time, takeovers and engineering make the main street look different. Here raped nature grows again. Wrens flock in the scrub, casuarinas hold the edge of the crater. Circling swifts swing through the fringes Of all you do not know, reminders that this communion can last, is still there for the touching. SHARDS In the first hours of morning I mend a broken pot. For three years, coming upstairs, I passed a clutch of potsherds On the landing. Old earth melted, silt, Clay, the gift of water Shaped, fired, used. Like a fractured rose The pieces cluster, collect dust, Insects, traces of old soil. Opening the door to go down I looked, in slanting light Into their shadows, telling myself I must mend that pot, Rebuild the warmth Leaching from baked earth. I fit and match, hold, Tie fragments together. The pieces gathered to something like A containing whole Again hold soil and seed, roots That explore the edges of repair. Why mend a broken flowerpot? It will never fool anyone. It can never outlast the casual Destruction of its heart. Published in Sand (Five Islands Press, 2002). BLOWFLIES SINGING Sometime you lose the lot never consider it when young building achievement, then window frames decay, doors don't fit their frames, the carpet wears. Fix a few to last a few years more until objects unravel, closer and faster, the falling off. Saucepan rivets leak soup and custard until you canıt keep up knowing it will all wear. The best and the beautiful decay in other hands. Each day there is some beauty in a rug, an omelet, the vivid flight of birds energy that runs across sunlight, blowflies singing summer erupting. About the Poet Connie Barber Connie Barber, originally from Sydney lived in England from 1928-36, returned to Melbourne, studied art, and served in the AWAS 1942-45. Graduated B.A.(Hons) from the University of Melbourne and worked in the Public Service in Melbourne and London. Lived in the UK 1953-65, returned to Melbourne and taught in Melbourne Secondary Schools 1970-80. Writing published from 1980. Exhibited with the Contemporary Art Society, Victorian Artists Society and in group and solo exhibitions, and has received awards for oils and watercolour. Poems have appeared in literary publications in all Australian states, UK., Ireland, New Zealand, Japan, Germany, Canada, USA. She has four adult children. Her first book, Budgerigah Flying (Abalone Press, 1989) was second in the Anne Elder Award. She received the Ian Mudie Award for A Tale Told in Enter Your House With Care, (Denlynne Publications, 1996) and the Society of Women Writers' Peace Award for Tower Hill Warrnambool. Her latest book is Sand, (Five Islands Press, 2002).    [Above] Photo of Connie Barber by Ponch Hawkes, 2002. I Next I Back I Exit I Thylazine No.10 (September, 2004)