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Thylazine: The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature                                                                                                                                         #5/thyla5j THE POETRY OF ALISON CROGGON Selected by Coral Hull [Above] Photo of Alison Croggon by Jacqueline Mitelman, 2001. "that blue point beyond any voice." I Quickening/Family Notes/ 1. At first I 2. Water I 3. Unhappiness I 4. Story of a marriage I 5. Intimations I 6. Home I Lindy I Emily Bronte I Songs of a Quiet Woman I Kittensong I The Elwood Organic Fruit and Vegetable Shop I Angels I Bird I Cuneiforms I Sky I Names I Afterwards I The Mouse I Silence broke my mouth I Shark I Quickening Family Notes 1: At first     quick en, v.t. & i. Give or restore natural or spiritual life or vigour to, animate, rouse, inspire, kindle, whence ~ing a.; receive, come to, life (of woman or embryo) - The Shorter Oxford Dictionary at first I was afraid howling my weird losses in a cot this I remember clearly also the red of veldt fires boiling the road with shadows my first suspicion of an alien land it is hard to trace these things: where a barrenness starts, a dry raw thing unnoticed in the valleys and later, looking down from a hill, the traveller flinches in strange recognition having always suspected it was there Published in This is the Stone (Penguin Australia, 1991). 2: Water water it was safe in baths but what was this   looking down from a ship of fatly painted iron in Durban harbour a surface full of glassy lips and underneath it shifting fathoms of red my father said jellyfish and the small tug loosed me four years old into my first ocean when I was five or six I nearly jumped the bridge was narrow steel and swayed in the high air I wanted to surprise its chains and the mean-windowed prim-roofed Cornish houses shut hard against the harbour's green snake eye Australia was practical and taught me swimming O the unnatural blue hiccup   the blue smart of baths a boy with sunshocked hair taught me nature's laws: dive in the deep end he said and you can't go wrong because everything floats I jumped so heavy with faith I had to be rescued and so learnt to respect from shores the eye without lids and the mouthless tongue which has no complexion except the colours it steals from above and beneath and within the breathless glitter of imagined fish but the sea moved in my dreams those prickling dreams forgotten in the numbing light of an alien dawn Published in This is the Stone (Penguin Australia, 1991). 3: Unhappiness Unhappiness is easier to live with than you think. You walk around with it like a limp compensating   compensating   compensating I knew God had abandoned us in this shallow land. I knew the ash-dry grass was a joke mocking our lush memories of green. The fleshy flowers of a gentle spring and cultured woods haunted our hedged dreams. Our heads lay in the starlight on bony hills in harsh summers when the heat crushed all water from the air and the dam drew back a poverty of gasping reeds and snakes came to sip from the hose. Published in This is the Stone (Penguin Australia, 1991). 4: Story of a marriage at first she thought he wanted ribbons she tied them all round the house   such nice bows to show the house was happy she bound her poppet girls up so well behaved her mouth was a pretty bow when she talked to friends I'm so happy she said with my girls and my horses look my kitchen is happy it is full of dogs and children and brass trinkets all polished with love and the hills in the winter   sometimes they're so green they could almost be England he seemed to like the ribbons if he noticed them perhaps if I make them bigger she thought more homely he orbited a cold land of money at evening he touched down a tired star and settled into a kitchen of plenty of good tough bread and round yellow butters and viscous purple cauldrons of berry jam and casseroles of wine-soaked hearts with the soft muscle melting and griddles of crumpets like hot and airy suns flooding the tongue with a dream of treacle and thick sweet cream wobbling high on a nub of scone on a long pine table with paper flowers smiling down from the wall sometimes in the dawn-rattle smell of hungry animals the unseen pungent flanks and the simple whinnies which answered her and the day unloosing its perfect colours like moods she felt a kind of peace he couldn't understand it when she cried for love because he said he loved her and was kind to her he gave her children horses land whatever she wanted but still she cried and raged in the poisonous nights he was hard with her to save her from herself after a while all she could taste was blood the sour blood of her anger bitten back the night was a crooked mirage of pills their children learnt the humiliations of sex reluctantly through wooden walls how cruel they became, ogres of passion at times it seemed her violence would swamp them all the house was full of broken cups he patiently reglued them every morning she could cry to no one but her children they gave her their small arms their panicky blank faces when she finally left it was a relief when their father cried, they understood an astonishing mute pain they were too young to encompass and carefully never mentioned Published in This is the Stone (Penguin Australia, 1991). 5: Intimations                 what is this phrase uncurling itself                 the trees are silent and winnow the sky                 with gnarled hands                 the birds sing but their song                 only deepens the silence Published in This is the Stone (Penguin Australia, 1991) 6: Home Home is only the heartbeat of the familiar. Overseas is the strange home of my genes and Melbourne is my dear conversational busy city home: but now we drive down night roads, searching for the landscape of our childhoods. Earlier we turned wrongly and are lost in farming country past our boundaries. We are miles out in the comfortable dark searching for one familiar sign to guide us. An hour on we find it and at last the road ceases to look like any other road. The grass through the windows smells of early summer: in a month the hills will all be moving gold except where dark trees sentry a garden watered carefully at dawn and twilight. One bridge means the Yarrawee, our river, which taught us all the moods and meanings of river and shaped itself behind our private legends. Each white gate brings us back a story, each hayshed, lighted farmhouse, deserted cemetery. A decade later still these things can call us although we thought we barely noticed them and hurried to the cities of our adulthood. But we are visitors now, mapping signs by the answering glimmer in our minds. We do not live here now. Published in This is the Stone (Penguin Australia, 1991). Lindy there were others   there were always others dogs running in the hungry twilight she was alone only at the crisis when she screamed the world bent its greedy ear when she smiled photographers came to listen her face hooded itself and slept in a chrysalis of stone the icons of her dreams scattered in the desert slowly they gathered them dog's tooth   torn cloth and labelled them with the ardour of converts she reassembled her voices in the silence the crow sat in her larynx telling the same truth always the oracle broke and bled   the people turned away, debating fashioning another legend Emily Bronte these windy slopes are shorn of the things which make life comfortable: broad trees, broken bread, the swell and supple curve of a lover's back. I sit here by my window, catch the rough, sweet scent of heather in my nostrils and write of death and love entwined like adders together.  The poetry lies wild in my veins, the poetry of granite skies stabbed by rocky outcrops, the giving spring of turf, the taste of solitude like aloes on my tongue, the bare unchanging moors, which take my sisters and myself with mute indifference and conquer under soil all our passion. Published in This is the Stone (Penguin Australia, 1991). Songs of a Quiet Woman lurching delicate as a snow queen down this street of greys unfocussed exactly enough to miss the businessmen goggling at my stocking   deciding (as I twitch primly into the tram seat   my handbag nestled on my lap like a puppy)   deciding this will be a day of minor survivals: etching a bloody mouth in fluorescent mirrors or idly lacquering a hand of claws: small weapons for a small war * there is one streetlight which always blinks off whenever I walk near it coming home late and secretarial to the hint of cats and cooking - silently inside me something flexes something unsurprised * men of course   lately they are kind to me although an acid starting in my sweat erodes me like an argument: snatched by hesitation in a shop eloquent and secret with the smell of him I feel sureness swelling like a bruise forcing blood into lips   breathless and reverent this pearl in the corruption of my belief * (yes please no trouble thankyou mother it's been a pleasure because I do not know how to be angry or ugly mother - granny addled with sherry under bombs in Winchester never raised her voice or said a word back to your father no matter what woman or what insults: her eighty year old skin is white and powdered and now she pisses in the basin mother and I know the proper way to lay tables) * to other things I turn the eye of god. the tv's gorgon eye has glazed me over and nothing touches me at all: not famine fire fear or revolution. only a shellshocked child in Beirut firmly stroked to stillness by a nun. he stared at her with eyes as black as hunger. I wept then for the simple magic of hands * the routine of coffee   the complicity of cigarettes and gossip this gentle leaning over narrow tables into the sly glass of recognition: I know I am dishonest in my dress (she says to me)   I know I am dishonest but all I ever knew was how to lie Published in This is the Stone (Penguin Australia, 1991). Kittensong somewhere a kitten is sleeping with its mouth of marshmallows and needles and ears like flickering moths and the little machine in its throat churning out feline butter it is not a serious kitten and will disturb the house by hanging the curtains upsidedown and turning the socks into tigers: it has been known to bite impeccably tailored ankles and sticks its little pink anus into the face of the sun if I knew where it slept I would be able to hide the novels and blunderbusses and tuning forks and photographs which it let out of their cages while I wasnąt looking and then Iąd wind on a long card the poems and little children tangled up with the wind and strewed about on the floor and send the giggles and sneezes back to their proper boxes: but I canąt find the rosebud which curls about its sleep of infinite pleasures The Elwood Organic Fruit and Vegetable Shop I will go walking in Elwood with my mind as smooth as a marrow winking at the unruffled sky throwing its light down for free letting the gardens exude their well-groomed scents and thinking everything good to the Elwood Organic Fruit and Vegetable Shop: for the counter is democratically in the centre and everyone smiles for people go on with the civil business of buying and selling under the handwritten notices for bawling children are solaced with grapes and handled to leave no bruises for the mangoes are soft yellow thighs and the strawberries are klaxons of sweetness for the mignonette purses its frilly lips and snowpeas pout their discreet bellies and the melons hug their quirky shapes under their marvellous rinds for onions ringing their coppery globes and o the silver shallots and the hairy trumpets of leeks for the cabbages folding crisp linens and the broccolis blooming in purple tulles and the dense green skirts of lettuces for peaches like breasts of angels and passionfruits hard and dark and bursting with seed in your palm for the dull gold flesh of pontiacs and knotty umbers of yams and new potatoes like the heels of babies for the tubs of sweet william and heart-lifting freesias and orchids damp and beautiful as clitoral kisses for poignant basil and maiden-haired fennel and prim blue-lipped rosemary and o! irrepressible mint! how they nestle up the vegetables, promising them the fragrance of their ardour! the marriages which await them! the lips that moisten to meet them! glorious speech of the earth! Published in The Blue Gate (Black Pepper, 1997). Angels the night embodies them, they come with patient animal eyes asking why it is we have forgotten them: pushing their childish mouths against our numb mouths, parching with the loss of them: the violent clouds announcing them, the bloom of carnal waters and the cries, abrupt and wordless, which presented them: they are yet present, rumoured wings in rooms where doors and windows shudder shut against them Published in The Blue Gate (Black Pepper, 1997). Bird The bird is a deep and troublesome fidelity. Even as maggots crawl through its braincase. In the skirl of storm it is bird, torn feathers, tiny bones, breasting the weight of air. Its song pricks out the present but is the shape of itself, the whole heart-trembling arc of its small time. If it knew any better, I would call it courage. Somewhere beyond me is a wholeness, a memory of being stone, although this consoles nothing and explains nothing. The dark is a burning sky shot with flight, its solitary, naked love. Published in The Blue Gate (Black Pepper, 1997). Cuneiforms red fist, nose, coney, eye, moody orchid, dripping black, viscous yellows, white crumbles of honey, weep, knowing death is dry and the first voice is water *** moontree, shaking out your moths into warm currents brushing here a harp, there tympanies of skin now a clutch, now a swarm, now a flight of lips constellations flaring in the blood *** cunning lips, split by your knowing flesh-music, carnal staves of labour, the wet cry flourishing and crumpled wings burning in the new air *** you, other skin, unguessable shape of my embrace, a blue sail swelling, vanishing, your familiar hull heaving clear of the dazzle of our common sea Published in The Blue Gate (Black Pepper, 1997) Sky I walk beneath the dirt-common sky:                it is an angel unfolded before me, its opera of clouds                collapses in silences and water one strand of its calamitous hair                smashes cities to matchwood it shuffles oceans and slams down                maces of ice and lightning it wakes in gardens the shelled                hunger, the brutal rose and all our human lamentations                fade into its vast patience and breed in our lungs the soft                urinous tumours tasting of knives and waiting and blackening cellars                where children vanish in tears Names for Ben the beautiful trains go in and out of his eyes their names are pure, like the night in its bottle fanning galaxies on his dream-itchy tongue when he stands up the names come nuzzling for pats and admonitions, he puts them in corners and watches them swell until they burst into questions the morning's percussion slides as gently as commas through spoons and tables and arms saying no and yes and nothing is sad, not even the sparrows that prop and peck and vanish in the sky Afterwards for Marina Tsaetayeva You can't hear your own voice any more. The air is loud with geraniums and daisies but you pass through more quietly than the rain. You have no business with flowers or with the earth. You have no business with the people hurrying past you. You are still and hidden. If you take a knife maybe you can find yourself all the way in and any action is dangerous the cancer might blossom behind your ear or the sky slide down and shatter. Maybe no one is listening, but the walls are curious. Maybe no one is watching, but the trees are attentive and ripple with unseasonable winds. You don't know when you will hear the knocking so you stay awake all night, a flickering ear. In the day you are as small as possible. You wonder if the dead are still in pain and if they dream, for you are forgetting to dream. Already you are insubstantial as the corpse of a sparrow. You can't even scream, you are empty, you want to be empty, you want to feel nothing because nothing can stop it. When she visits you, you sit ashamed fiddling with the cutlery.   You have forgotten the formalities, you have snuffed out the wingbeat of courage or maybe it was never there.   You study your mirror, a white plate broken in the mud. The mouse Consider the mouse. His squeak is modest and purposeful as he goes about his business. He eats the scraps from god's table wherever chance and guile place him. At any moment the unforeseen may shatter his spine with steel. Nevertheless he persists, discreetly nibbling the wires in the walls of god's house even unto the day of conflagration. Silence broke my mouth Silence broke my mouth: the crumbs flew out the window like paper butterflies or those magnolias nonchalantly shattered on the grass. These mirrors are confusing, so cold and expensive, they ripple out noiselessly like the sweet curve of water from a cliff where I am looking down, seeing further out that blue point beyond any voice. Shark          no longings summon me nor prayers twisting blindly on a panic                  nor noose of trailing light          nor soft seductions of the wan and knowing eye nor strenuous nets of thought                          will tempt me out to struggle at your feet          but hang your gristly heart on ivory hooks of rib carved patiently                    in cold and silent noons          and knot the iridescent gut that spills all bloody from your pulsing belly                            and I will smell the truth and I will come About the Poet Alison Croggon Alison Croggon was born in 1962. Her work includes plays, libretti, translations, editing and criticism. Her first novel Navigatio (Black Pepper, 1996) was highly commended in the 1995 Australian/Vogel national literary awards. She has written two operas, The Burrow and Gauguin, with the highly regarded Sydney composer Michael Smetanin, and has completed the libretto for their third, The White Army. Her performed work for theatre includes The Burrow (Perth Festival, Sydney, Melbourne 1994-95 and broadcast by ABC Radio), Lenz (Melbourne Festival 1996), Rules of Thumb (Red Shed Company, Adelaide 1997 and ABC Radio 1998) and Confidentially Yours (Playbox Theatre 1998). ABC Radio National has broadcast a number of her works, including The Burrow, the plays Samarkand and Monologues for an Apocalypse. Many of her poems have been set to music by various composers, including Smetanin (Skinless Kiss of Angels, Elision New Music Ensemble), Christine McCombe and Margaret Legge-Wilkinson (Canberra New Music Ensemble). She is the Editor of Masthead literary arts zine.    [Above] Photo of Alison Croggon by Jacqueline Mitelman, 2001. I Next I Back I Exit I Thylazine No.5 (March, 2002)