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Thylazine: The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature                                                                                                                                    #6/thyla6k-ja AUSTRALIAN POETS SERIES 6 The Poetry of Jordie Albiston Selected by Coral Hull [Above] Photo of Jordie Albiston by Jenni Mitchell, 1998. I WHALE SONG I THIS ATOM, THE WORLD I SESTINA FOR MONKEYS I WYE RIVER, AFTER BRIEF VIOLENT STORM I WHALE SONG Cast off like a choirboy on the celestial crescendo I ride my leviathan through testaments of deep.   With my good leg astern and my ivory bone propped like a flag in the spiracle of this beast I am Ahab still plowing the vast body of then.   Three quarters of me splutters in a fishbowl of water- siege yet I am captain of this voyage revenge my first mate, ancient memory my faithful crew.   It is a teary expanse that drenches my sight, eye of salt lung of salt, my whole structure a tottery pillar of fear-crusty salt.   Balanced on the bulk between heaven and dismay I sway, broken mast, mad harpoon, stuck like a limpet on the hoary back of pain. But do your worst, cetacean shadow I have flukes of my own, and when you sound I can hold breath for a lifetime. Steeped in purpose precious as spermaceti and morbid as ambergris, I am bound in blubber no loving barb can frustrate. Throw up what past treasure you can. Blast me with your blowhole, I will not jump ship until the sun itself drowns and the moon becomes fish for I am one- legged Ahab with no shore for my soul only this ocean of opalescence to mirror and mirror an old and landless heart. Published in Nervous Arcs (Spinifex Press, 1995). THIS ATOM, THE WORLD Though our said spirits went bush millennia ago we wake up to the luxury of ourselves.       Our house remains stable forever for now on sale for a cool baker's dozen. We are as yet unrepentant on paper: no crime - thank democracy - no time.       Our town right now is technically unthreatened any danger (necessarily) remaining unfiled. We are not dying, forget searching, beyond old age, bad illness, the odd Act of God       and our city is not yet burning in churches but awaiting palms upward, the miracle, a sign. SESTINA FOR MONKEYS       We knew nothing, until we knew nothing. It blew through us like a blow to the face. That was our first introduction to light - too late, as it happens, for our promise had already been proffered and its impact would rule us like a despot for decades.       Recalling our own extinction, decayed and decomposed - something into nothing - we hurt like a wisdom tooth, impacted in the soul, until the truth itself forced us to review the nature of our premise. It scared out of us the living daylights.       With no western icon to lessen or lighten the load, we continued our decadence and saw the musical Promises, Promises and sang along loudly, never even noting the irony. We took the best seats (facing Mecca, in Melbourne) and made our pact       there in the audience, the theatre packed and perfecting its hush, the house-lights dimming to help usher in the famed farce. Despite being hailed Show of the Decade we saw nothing/heard nothing/knew nothing until we realised en masse the promise       we all had sung was wrong. The promise was to uphold the main theme song - in fact our souls sold for a lot less than nothing but if making a buck can put out the light we never knew, nor cared. For decades to come we held our hands over our faces.       Maybe it was a case of survival in the face of truth but personally I doubt it. Promiscuity and free enterprise aside, we were declared an aircraft lost somewhere out west, on impact always, our souls the missing black box. Lit from within we resist it still, our nothingness.       But let's face it: we belong to the impatient race, and promises not to be wrought lightly decay longingly, burn out, turn to naught. WYE RIVER, AFTER BRIEF VIOLENT STORM For Liz Conor It began with the wind a short fierce wind which blew the waves backward out to sea. They moved in long folds away from shore towards the South Pole and the frozen sun. I watched wave after wave dissolve into sky felt them stop, stiffen, transform into land. Arguing with the weather birds tried to land where seed and bread whirled in the wind. They fell in large numbers down from the sky king parrots and currawongs a gull off the sea their colours concealed by the lack of a sun though a show all the same you can be sure. And then the rain: sheets of it hit the shore with a hammering, and suddenly the land was stamped silver. I looked up for the sun in its tantrum of light while the window panes pewtered with water. I could not see anything: all was hidden by the falling sky when just as it started it stopped. The new sky opened itself into rainbow: from the shore of the headland to the expanse of the sea it fanned away northward towards Iceland or any land that would allow its arc to unwind. The storm had moored, and its stowaway sun emerged at last and waved. I watched some birds Major Mitchells among them ski to a halt on the railing. Although the wind had scattered the seed they all seemed sure there'd be more. So there on the landing I fed them again, the sky subdued the sea at peace their heads held on angles to see my eyes their colours rekindled by the sun. I considered their connection to the land for where do they go when it rains? The sky is no good in a storm like this and the shore has no shelter at all to offer in such winds. I know how it feels to wind up in the sea far from the shore and an intermittent sun which neither sky can lay claim to, or land. About the Poet Jordie Albiston Jordie Albiston was born in Melbourne. Her first poetry collection Nervous Arcs, received first prize in the Mary Gilmore Award, second prize in the Anne Elder Award, and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Award. Her second collection is entitled Botany Bay Document: A Poetic History of the Women of Botany Bay. Her most recent collection, The Hanging of Jean Lee, explores the life and death of the last woman hanged in Australia (1951). Jordie received the Dinny O'Hearn Memorial Fellowship in 1997, and was original editor of the poetry e-zine Divan. She holds a PhD in literature, and has two teenage children. She is currently writing full-time on an Australia Council grant.    [Above] Photo of Jordie Albiston by Jenni Mitchell, 1998. I Next I Back I Exit I Thylazine No.6 (September, 2002)