Sturt and the Vultures
MINCING, mincing we go. And it follows, follows,
This hot nor'-easter: sometimes even a little testy as us
So that these poor horses sprocketed to its whirring coils
Slew away, working at the bit. Browne may be dying.
Little hot tantrums of wind and tiny pebbles
Desiccate and annul the words I toss to him.
My thoughts skip among the stones. And it follows, follows,
This hot nor-'easter.
Back at the Depot
Our old Grandsire, misunderstood, is moping with Poole.
I gave Him His text at five sharp.
Feel for Him, there, old bearded Predestinator
Trying to look kind. . . it's the plan He's tied to:
The elect and the - the - wind, stones, pebbles.
Browne may be dying.
Remember, my father's fireplace,
That lithograph beside the clock (Him there, as if the good Calvin
Had set Him there with St Michael and a sword):
Yes, once at tea when prankful vermilion spat
And wriggled up out of the grate
I was solidly in the army - Browne may be dying -
There were cannonballs and bolting horses
And heathen by the barrel converted (I was about fourteen),
A girl, and benighted beachheads named after me
(Hullo, Mr Browne) and always the Search for something,
An opal, a prisoner. . .
Yes, I saw that prankful vermilion
Frisk up almost to His face. At the Search it was
- Wind, Stones - for an instant the Old'un looked hopeful
And about my own age.
Every morning now, the same:
I give Him His text early and wander off from Him
Leaving Him sob over the dear sacred scheme of His dotage
Dispositioning the just and the damned. Stones, stones, stones.
. . . Picture His poor tired old hands working away at the bellows
To keep up this hot nor'-easter. How it follows, follows.
Mincing we come, we go. Sand, pebbles all frills and furbelows.
Browne may be dying. Water back at the Depot.
- If only to rest His poor old hands a little. . . How it follows
This hot nor'-easter. . . the Void, the sand, the pebbles,
Little tattered pockets of the Void. . .
Browne is calling,
I was dreaming.
- The birds, the birds! Crying like children,
Closer, wheeling, wheeling, descending, closer!
They come in ecstatic flight, rapturous as the Paraclete,
Tongues of fire - it's a well of voices. Crying like children.
My horse props, makes to rear, shivers, and cannot move.
They come at us, begging, menacing, at eye level, above.
I lash at them with my hands, filled with terror and love.
Fire a shot, Mr Browne. And, poets you wheel away.
You are lost, gone. Where do you come from? (Feel the
caressing nor'-easter
Following, following, chanting.) Are you from the Void?
Poets of dry upper nothingness, you are hunger, we are hunger,
You are thirst, we are thirst.
We go mincing along followed by the hot nor'-easter
- But sometimes we stray towards Sacrament, creek-bed, Virgin -
You stray, poets. But you ride neither high Heaven
Nor the earth of statuesque stones. Something lures you down,
Quartz, slate, limestone, an eyeball, an opal, a prisoner,
Till hunger and thirst wheel into madness within you,
Your immaculate Words, cryings (O hear the sweet nor'-easter)
Piping to us, see the lovely Madonna-faces in the gilt
Frameways of pure sand and pebbles!
But neutralities or wrath
Of man - or is it of God! - expel you again from earth
Driving you out of sight and mind like exhausted breath,
The wing whimper, the talon. Only something far beneath
Cowers away when you come.
And its name is Death.
Published in Collected Poems (Angus & Robertson, 1969).
