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Thylazine: The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature                                                                                                                                         #6/thyla6j THE POETRY OF DOROTHY HEWETT Selected by Coral Hull [Above] Photo of Dorothy Hewett by Merv Lilley, 1983. "the irises lining the path the white cockatoos in a flurry of wings a visitation of angels." I Australian Sunset I Echidna in a Parking Lot I Anniversary I Zoo Story I Summer Solstice: 2 I ... The shadows of nesting birds I The Frogs I Picasso's 'Girl With Dove' I Inheritance I Death of a Cat I Early One Morning I In Wind and Rain I Quail's Nest I Signposts I Making An End To It I Moon-Man I The Gull I From Return to the Peninsula I Last Summer I Sweet Song For Katie I Australian Sunset The red sun At the heart of the earth Flattened out, A broad quivering jellyfish On the edge of the river. Red dissolving sun Quivering in the eyeballs In myriads of trembling Red sunned images Hot against the blue dark Swathed hills, silent, dark smooth Rising from the edge of scrub. The stubborn scrub, prickly Dark and colourless Under the liquid plated sun, Drying up the earth, the twisted Scrub, sapless and stern-willed Against red-plated hunger, Twisting itself with a stubborn Utter persistency out of that Red devouring beast Balanced on the hills. The quietness, the all sinking Of the Australian earth In to its completeness, Its jealous persistent Defiance of that quivering ball, Leaving it dark, darker than All beginnings, arid and strong After the red death Above the hills, Sinking into itself With no relief But the strange, dark completeness Of defiance, that continues Forever, that has lost All youth, all   hope, all greed All tenderness, and lies Colourless, dark grey Huddled under the immense Burning circle of the sun. Then sinks into its own Pain relief, its own dark silences Beyond all blood and bondage. Published in Dorothy Hewett: Collected Poems (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1995). Echidna in a Parking Lot (for my son) "Well I've done my good deed for the day," he said. "I rescued an echidna from the parking lot." "I had a wonderful afternoon," he said. "I watched some wild mice making a nest in a tea-tree." "I got drunk on vodka and danced all night by myself. I lay on top of a blonde and bit her on the neck." He loathes demonstrations of making himself conspicuous. Next year he'll be called up, given a gun and a meal ticket, or forty days in Holsworthy in a bright cold concrete cell with a spy-hole and a plastic bucket and a water bottle. He'll say, every thirty minutes, day and night, "Private J. Flood, No. XXXX, forty days sir," and be given thirteen slices of bread every twenty-four hours. I wish he was an echidna or a wild mouse who could hide in a parking lot or a tea-tree. Published in Dorothy Hewett: Collected Poems (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1995). Anniversary Driving back after midnight black streets, empty asphalt, wind. Suddenly a rain of yellow leaves. They lay in drifts over the wheel hubs, clogging the windscreen wipers ... confetti? We were driving home from our wedding, an old shoe bumped us, full of leaves. Published in Dorothy Hewett: Collected Poems (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1995). Zoo Story Feeding the giraffes in winter sunlight, they stood like great arched swans                                                           drinking each other's urine in an act of love so simple it puts us to shame. Behind us in the straw-filled manger, the newborn six-foot child wobbles to life, it's mild eyes luminous.  I turn aside, empty of seed, feeling the tug of life stir, like a folded flower, put away. Through the nocturnal house we move together. The small quiet animals of my childhood stare at me. Our hands brush by accident, touched by tenderness, I watch you demonstrate your love for all God's creatures                                                           but the human ones. Myself, my son, my grandson, share your zoo, your pride, your crippled love. They might have been our own; my gentle son whose love embraces animal, bird, tree, stone,                                                           & flower, woman & child. We walk apart, the bears grumble in their pens, the white cockatoos parody our babble. You kiss my forehead. I watch you walk away, having shared your ritual ark without a word. And yet it has remained with me, the image of us standing there feeding our carrots to the gentle beasts. Published in Dorothy Hewett: Collected Poems (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1995). Summer Solstice: 2 It is the miraculous summer but who will share it the hawk   the transfigured night the crow in the garden flapping around about death a subtle & sable lover. Dive down holding the breath in the chill lake water goannas bask on the bank the watersnake slips out of reach beneath my feet the stringybarks drown float out with the tide under the bridge the light above & the night below to the salt-water river the sky   the banks   the dark unconscious lead to warm water   sleep & the fish feeding blind in the shallows the gulls cross-stitching the reef I see the Seal      huge as a dream lying on her side   stranded   between two black rocks the surf pounding stench of the Seal   her dry barnacled skin heaving with flies   the opaque eyes blown   fringed with lashes I stand at the neap tide & pray for a storm to take her out through the rocks to the foam where the sea-wrack races over the sand   let her ride home to the deep places   that have no naming her shadow falls on the land I turn   I don't look back   there is              no claiming. Published in Dorothy Hewett: Collected Poems (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1995). ... The shadows of nesting birds 11 The shadows of nesting birds circle the house finch   fantail   thornbill   silvereye spring showers wet the windows winter has passed death turns to birth air water light and continuity the wattlebirds swing on the red-hot pokers the cat has hidden her three black kittens in the hedge the sunlight spreads to saturate the lawn the Indian mynahs turn the earth for worms against the silken sky the she-oak burns gilt as a tapestry gulls drift through the updraft in a paper chase marking the boundary night falls with looping swallows hooting owls the dry cough of the foxes on the cliff sitting together their sparkling eyes reflected off the sea around the bend the same house waits beside the weeping tree closed in on itself feeling like home. The Frogs Do you remember how at night by the tidal river we listened to the frogs in chorus in the wetlands behind the house? How they sang in the moonlight together sweeter than birds drumming repeating the notes in irregular heartbeats till the night was shaken with sound. Always at the same time they began it with a signal out of the dark one croaked one listened one took up the refrain the rest came in tumultuous deafening till the little house glowed and shook the river ran faster the old dog farted in his sleep you cupped one hand to your ear Listen to the frogs you whispered singing for dear life out in the swamp. Published in Dorothy Hewett: Collected Poems (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1995). Picasso's 'Girl With Dove' The girl in the blue dress with the dove in her arms is standing forever in the curve of the hall. Nobody notices her there: she has merged into the curtain's shadow, or the strange blue light that comes from the pine tree outside the open window. But I am always conscious of her, her cropped head bent tenderly over the dove, her milky eyes fixed on me with gentle accusation. Published in Dorothy Hewett: Collected Poems (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1995). Inheritance I have travelled a long way from my origins Is there anything left of the child with the wheaten hair who listened for owls loved poetry and winter fires remembered the strange moment in the dark fields when the pet lambs grown into ewes and wethers trotted along the fence lines bleating to be let in? You can never go back only onwards into the world leaving behind all the loved things   the grandfather flying on his winged nag through the frosty paddocks the handsome father haloed in sparks roasting spuds in the ashes of the playroom fire. Where do you go from there concealed in darkness glowing in the heat in the grass the hawk in the wood the plovers spinning of spring in front of the plough - to the old woman watching for her bulbs to come up the irises lining the path the white cockatoos in a flurry of wings a visitation of angels. Published in Dorothy Hewett: Collected Poems (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1995). Death of a Cat The little cat we brought from Darlinghurst crying all the way in the back seat of the car shivered once and died this Sunday morning after the coldest night of the year. She who was once a skilful mouser who climbed the magnolia bush hunting the   nestling bulbuls and came in with bloody feathers spilling from her jaws a kitten with rickets a foraging bundle of fur dumped in Wisdom Lane she fought fierce tomcats in territorial battles at 8 am stretched out in front of the heater she trembled and gave up the ghost she will not come this way again scratching at the front door at midnight we will bury her under the Japanese maple where she liked to lie in the shade in summer watchful in the tall grass while the cabbage moths played tag teasing around her head but sometimes I still see her limping up from the orchard her yellow eyes ablaze absorbing sunlight her fur alight with the dying fires                                                           of her nine lives. Published in Halfway up the Mountain (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2001). Early One Morning The cat is dead and the black rabbit but the fox is still free to leap through the kitchen window at midnight clattering the pans early one morning we found him hidden behind the sofa lifting his muzzle in a snarl but sitting there in the first light your hands hanging loose on your thighs you questioned him in the language you always use for the animals backwards and forwards you went in a friendly conversation he copying every intonation in his foxy whine till you told him well I think it's time you went as if you had given him permission he sidled out through the door pausing and taking his time looking back once and testing the air with his red brush trailing behind him he loped away through the orchard making for his own wild bush on the other side of the railway line. Published in Halfway up the Mountain (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2001). In Wind and Rain I have a natural affinity with wind and rain for me it stands for something other surcease from pain the scent of the frangipanni is nostalgic enough to begin the azaleas flowering lift their heads for the breathing in pressing close to the window glass the plum tree hazy with bloom reaches in to measure it out the circumference of my room the turbulent Spring outside equates with something within the earth is beginning to stir just as the mind begins to shuffle up out of the dark the seed from that darkness springs shaking his rain-wet feathers the magpie begins to sing these are the gifts unasked but waited for season on season not so much to change a life but to give it a greater reason a covenant all is not lost another year to survive a kind of promise to keep that the elements are on my side. Published in Halfway up the Mountain (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2001). Quail's Nest My father swerves the team to miss the quail's nest hidden in the furrow she rises up beating her wings her cries fill all the world of sky and cloud echoing her call... and so he passes the caring farmer with his crooked furrow saluting life the warm round eggs hidden in the Spring grass the quail rising and falling pulled by invisible heart strings. Published in Halfway up the Mountain (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2001). Signposts There are dusty roads   signposts pointing over the next rise to the perfect memory where everything brightens glistens even the hides of the big soft moonlit animals stamping in their stalls the mice ride on the tops of the hay wagons crouched under the owl's shadow the silver frog swings by the tank stand its webbed feet climbing the ivy geranium the Twin City tractor starts up like a heartbeat working day and night through the hammering heat stripping the one thousand acres as the steam train passes twanging the wire fences the rabbits sit upright dazzled and trembling the insects fly through the bright air their wings translucent as gauze the seasons alter dry summers and green winters the moon changes full to half to quarter the farmhouse rots under its wheel of stars. Published in Halfway up the Mountain (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2001). Making An End To It And so they have all gone off out into the dark my father the horse whisperer my mother who loved window shopping and afternoon tea in town my grandfather waltzing    my grandmother sewing a shroud Dolly the ambler   Ginger the hard-mouthed roan Blossom and Nancy   Belle Strawberry Buttercup Daisy the sheepdog who ate poisoned mutton left out for the foxes Tabby with half her head blown off Trix the shearer's cat turning somersaults out on the verandah the ponies the children the team and the topsoil all blown away wandoo and white gum jam salmon gum she-oak and wattle the native birds in the forest the small hopping animals the garden has gone to seed the German piano that symbol of civilisation left in the shell of the farmhouse is hopelessly out of tune when we look back all that is left is the glittering land sour with salt laced with wire fences we helped to build and destroy. Terror Australis The Great South Land they call it never dreaming it would become a dumping ground for lags and screws pirates and seafarers cried Land and there it was a crag   a rock a burning beach   a drift of eucalypts and smoke   a nothingness   so turn away raise sail and leave it to millenniums but still it nagged at them more expeditions   more coastlines mapped more scurvy ridden crews maddened for news of home was this the promised land beyond the skills of navigation the mystery of the falling stars nightmare of leaves that never fell turned sideways to the sun animals that leaped and hopped a bird they laughed and mocked them the blacks starring in horror at their savagery the shreds of skin in bloody tatters blowing on the triangles. How to escape from this great hell on earth to cross the known edges of the world dissolved in cloud or flights of cockatoos dipping down the flank of the furthest mountain if they climbed across it would they find China on the other side or any heathenist territory better than this Christian colony of whipping sadists intoning English prayers   but setting out their bleached bones lay in empty watercourses or glittering salt lakes risen up out of the sea bed Yet dying or surviving they became the lands and marked it with their spoor the devil's footprint or the parson's promise no matter   it would all become an ancestry of mockery a dry wit   a destructive rage to fell the trees that were not English trees to sow the stubborn land   a terra nullius for the taking that would not answer to their husbandry   while out beyond the limits of their knowledge black men and women under windswept stars danced   sang   paid homage to the land they spent themselves in taming and yet some learnt to love it in their fashion   gave it another language celebrated with their Irish songs the hoof beat of their horses footloose and rootless   always moving out beyond the outposts of the furthest cities they became a wandering tribe of nomads   footsteps fading into the scrub searching the sky's uncertain edge the boundary fence that marks The Great South Land. Published in Dorothy Hewett: Collected Poems (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1995). Moon-Man Stranded on the moon, a librium dreamer in a lunar landscape the tabloids were full of your blurred, blown-up face, the neat curled head, the secret animal eyes, immolated forever in the Sea of Tranquility. I keep getting messages from outer space, 'Meet me at Cape Canaveral, Houston, Tullamarine.' A telegram came through at dawn to the Dead Heart Tracking Station. I wait on winter mornings in hangars dwarfed by grounded crates like giant moths furred with frost. Moon-pictures - you dance clumsily on the screen, phosphorescent, domed, dehumanised, floating above the dust, your robot voice hollow as bells. The crowds queue for the late edition, scan headlines avidly, their necks permanently awry, looking for a sign, a scapegoat, a priest, a king: the circulation is rising. They say you have been knighted in your absence, but those who swear they know you best, assert you are still too radical to accept the honour. They have sent several missions, but at lift-off three atronauts fried, strapped in their webbing. Plane-spotters on penthouse roofs have sighted more UFOs. Sometimes I go out at night to stare at the galaxies Is that your shadow, weightless magnified in light, man's flesh enclosed in armour, suffering eyes in perspex looking down, sacred and murderous from your sanctuary? Published in Dorothy Hewett: Collected Poems (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1995). The Gull I am swimming in a calm sea wet heads dot the swell                                 waiting for a wave the water moves   a great white gull rises up out of the leaden ocean it pursues me over the land I run into the glasshouse the glasshouse splinters around me I recognise everything      the beach of my childhood    with the headland shaped like an emu    enfolding the bay far off Gull Rock   glistening on the horizon   the sandhills of shell coarse sea kelp                                spiking my feet. It is the house of my marriage with the glass walls burning in sunlight before we planted the lawn or the trees grew. The gull pecks at the picture windows its red beak splinters      I am small as a child crouching in the corner where there is nowhere to crouch everything bare    brilliant      only the shadow of the giant gull with its marble eyes hunched pecking over the house - you have turned me into a bird that covers the sea. Published in Dorothy Hewett: Collected Poems (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1995). From Return to the Peninsula 1 We come in the off season when the rich mansions the summer houses are empty and stray cats with bells roam through the Paradise gardens the back beach is deserted the key-holes in the bathing boxes stiff with cold except for one slow learner drifting along the shoreline in army surplus his breast pinned by badges each night I hear the ride rise but the mornings are like green glass as if I lay on the floor of an ocean only the gold butterfly hatched out for her first flight stumbles against the melaluca hedge dusting the death spots on the backs of my hands with pollen 5 I am the one no longer beautiful behind the melaluka hedge beside the bay who sleeps and weeps and sleeps again calling to you across the drift of time I hide in the silent garden furred with frost remote and still where no one comes where time itself is lost and the bay runs like watered silk through a skein of hills no one will burst through the melaluka hedge no one will open the door to the silent house the dark rooms of the unconscious wait in a square of sunlight circled by the sea the thorns grow higher as the birds grow quiet 8 The garden behind glass moonlit as day the rain walks through the grass intimate as a lover out on the bay a stormy petrel calls from its wild domain poems dance like firelight on the walls eerie as white frost the fox moans by the front gate marauding for birds I lie in the still house wired for sound trembling with words found lost found again fox firelight birds fish gut and oyster catchers drunken as lords flapping home through the rain daybreak the receiver clicks into silence the fire dies to a smoulder of sticks the hedge hung with diamonds shearwaters out of reach falling down the sky Published in Dorothy Hewett: Collected Poems (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1995). Last Summer In the little house with the sparrows, The heavenly dew descends, The wind-bells chime in the jacaranda, Is this how the world ends? The air is so thin and fragile, We can hear spiders spin, Shut up the house this summer, Let nobody in. A shadow hops in the garden, The small sparrow sings, Time spreads, the sun drops suddenly And clips his wings. A flurry and fall of sparrows, Dropping into the sea, What old man sits on the seashore And counts and counts for me? The grasshopper flicks and stumbles Hesitant in the grass, The sea pounds and the rain pours, On this dark house of glass. I lie so still at midnight You cannot hear me weep, And who is there to tell you, You cry all night, in your sleep. Published in Dorothy Hewett: Collected Poems (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1995). Sweet Song For Katie The white doves are cooing, Oh! Katie my dear, In the sun in the morning, In the spring of the year. The peace doves are cooing, Oh! Kate can you hear? And when you are grown And summer is high, Will you listen my darling To the birds in the sky, And spread out your wild arms As if you could fly? Oh! I ask nothing better For Katie and me That we're brave as the new wind That springs from the sea, And we sing like the peace doves In the green mango tree. For we'll build a new world, When the cane grass is high, And peace will drop softly Like wings from the sky And the children will run, And the wild birds will fly. And all that I ask now For Katie and me, Is a faith that is strong As the wind off the sea, Blowing so loud In the green mango tree, With a song that is ceaseless As a dove in a tree. Published in Dorothy Hewett: Collected Poems (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1995). About the Poet Dorothy Hewett Dorothy Hewett was brought up on a wheat and sheep farm in the Great Southern Desert. Her father, a convinced conservationist, strongly influenced her life, teaching her the names of the native birds, trees, plants and animals. For years he tried to influence the West Australian Agricultural Department to give the farmers free trees to plant and nurture in a plan for reaforrestation to contain the rising salt, but was met only with derision. She has published eleven volumes of poetry, three novels, and an autobiography. Most of her twenty one plays have been performed by theatre companies throughout Australia. She has won many awards for her work, been writer-in-residence at many Australian Universities, and lectured extensively on Australian Literature. Last year she opened the Adelaide Writers' Festival with an attack on the present government for their attitudes to the Arts, the environment and Aborigines. She is a long-time supporter of Aboriginal land rights, the greening of Australia and the importance of the Arts. She has received a life time emeritus grant from the Australia Council, a Doc. Litt. from the University of Western Australia.    [Above] Photo of Dorothy Hewett by Merv Lilley, 1983. I Next I Back I Exit I Thylazine No.6 (September, 2002)