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Thylazine: The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature                                                                                                                                    #5/thyla5k-db AUSTRALIAN POETS SERIES 5 The Poetry of David Brooks Selected by Coral Hull [Above] Photo of David Brooks by Jenni Mitchell, 1999. I THE HOUR I FLYING-FOX SONNETS I THE VISION OF ST EUSTACE I BORA GROUND I THE LYREBIRD I BROWN PIGEON I THE HOUR the sleepless hour the hour of the last stars the hour of returning to find nothing the blind hour the mole's hour the hour of the cursing the hour of the vicious love the hour of the sobbing the hour of the fighting of shadows the hour of the sweeping the hour of the process the hour of unblessedness the lost hour the bat's hour the hour of resignation the hour of the flesh the broken hour the hour of hopeless desire the trapped hour the hour of the maze the hour of the fury the bleak hour the bitter hour the hour of the ceaseless repetition the desperate hour the hour of sirens the hour of the screaming the burnt hour the empty hour the hour of the wind blood's hour bone's hour the hour of forgetting the hour of the exhaustion of the heart the hour of the lost and lost again the pale hour regret's hour the hour of the body the hour of the boat, the flat water, laughter open as shadow FLYING-FOX SONNETS 1. The male of the genus Pteropus has cock and balls just like a tiny man and with his mate makes love for up to eighteen hours at a time, littering the night about them with their screams. Licking one another boldly or kissing about the neck and face, never losing their grip on branch or overhang, they fold each other gently in their black-umbrella wings and move slowly, as if afraid that this were all a dream they might awake from. 2. High in a fig or native mulberry, un- characteristically downside-down, the female flying-fox gives birth to an infant more than half her size, twisting in the final seconds downside-up to give one last thrust skyward before - knowing her baby hardly ready to glide out like a trainee Valkyrie - catching it deftly with her strong black fingers lest it fall like a ripe plum or passionfruit earthward through the sudden air THE VISION OF ST EUSTACE Four weeks ago a wind straight from Siberia scraped through the square snapping the leaves off plane trees, hiding the village behind closed shutters, curtained doors. Now, the weather milder, nearing Christmas, small boys are kicking footballs in the Place Jeu de Ballon while their fathers trim vines beyond Tressan or play petanque behind the Mairie and Madam Sabatier's idiot brother Robert sits on his bench with his one yellow glove shooting imaginary pigeons from the air. Straight from 'The Vision of St Eustace' a young brown dog, too callow for the hunt runs down the Impasse des Cigales with a stolen croissant. A few granates still cling to the winter bushes; the path to Le Puget is strewn with fallen almonds. In the field by the highway the pheasants have nested over the ancient ice-house. After the thunder of the Mirage chasseur a slender glider drifts soundless through the light-grey sky. In the White House, half a century away, the President wipes his prick, declares another war against Iraq; on the tarmac, 'intelligent' missiles sit in cold and steely silence, unable to think of what they are about to do. BORA GROUND Overcast three days now but today again sun. New house, new part of the coast, things otherwise much as they always are - sleeping, reading, preparing meals, now and again conversation, a game of cards. Sometimes I swim a mile up the estuary for the silence, the slap of whiting in the shallows or at night wake an hour or two before daybreak, thinking, the mind going back to its ruptured places, words reaching out with no other purpose but to mark or claim a fallen branch, a stone, that white bird's flight. THE LYREBIRD Early on the way to a meeting in Bateman's I glimpse a lyrebird on the edge of the Mt Agony road gone as soon as I notice it I slow down and look at the place where it entered but there is nothing, the bird become dry branch, scrub- shadow. Later writing this down I wonder what part of the self it is hides amongst language - looking at these words, this page, trying to find where I entered. Published in the 1996 Newcastle Prize Anthology (Australia). BROWN PIGEON A bird brown, thick-tailed, large pigeon perhaps, or female blackbird the books do not help no one here to know and soon too late to tell eyes plucked out, feathers scattered, maggots when I turn it over writhing in the black mess near the heart About the Poet David Brooks David Brooks' first collection of poetry, The Cold Front (Hale & Iremonger 1983), won the Ann Elder Award and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Prize. His books include The Book of Sei (Hale & Iremonger 1986; Faber & Faber 1987), Sheep and the Diva (McPhee Gribble 1990) and Black Sea (Allen & Unwin 1997), and his longer fictional work The House of Balthus (Allen & Unwin 1995). David also has essays The Necessary Jungle (McPhee Gribble 1990), and edited works of and on A.D. Hope Selected Poems (HarperCollins/ A&R 1991), The Double Looking Glass: New and Classic Essays on the Poetry of A.D. Hope (UQP 2000), R.F. Brissenden and others, Poetry and Gender (edited with Brenda Walker; UQP 1989) and Suddenly Evening: Selected Poems of R.F. Brissenden (McPhee Gribble 1991). David Brooks has taught at various Australian universities (the A.N.U., the University of Western Australia, the University of N.S.W.) and edited various journals (Helix, The Phoenix Review). He is currently senior lecturer in Australian Literature at the University of Sydney, where he is also co-editor of Southerly. David Brooks' work has been translated into several languages, and widely published and anthologised overseas.    [Above] Photo of David Brooks by Jenni Mitchell, 1999. I Next I Back I Exit I Thylazine No.5 (March, 2002)