CLICK HERE for 'Bell-Birds'
My second offering is biographical. The man who joined the Australian colonies into one nation, Sir Henry Parkes, helped Kendall to get government jobs and assisted him when he had recovered sufficiently from alcohol addiction by getting him back into his beloved north coast bush as a forester. One of Kendall's daughters, Araluen, drowned. Kendall never got over this.
My poem attempts to picture Kendall as a forester; the hardships of this occupation killed him.
KENDALL
Trickling under the all-weather
coat
water
running thinly
over the brim and
clay.
A hand
parts
the bracken
shaking
scoops up a palm.
Dry retching all morning.
Pushes himself away from the earth;
the dank smell has swirled in
and settled.
Turns
and sees
the chestnut dark and hanging its
head.
Passes, a few miles.
Escape was a note
curled in a bottle,
looking
and talking
and forgetting
where.
Turning,
he sees, hears, sniffs up
what he said then,
'It's in the bush!'
Sober
but entranced
he'd strained to see it
overseas,
was happily
thus convinced
there it is.
Drunk,
said,
'Was!'
The bush.
'Here!'
Adam had taken his good
racing-saddle
and done it
in the bush.
He knew why
-
that way it couldn't, at the last,
elude him.
It did,
it did.
McCrae,
them all.
Turning away from it
to that fairer, further shore;
winning an hundred guineas
in an International Exhibition.
'Dry mate?'
Yes,
couldn't see anything then
effort, so Sir Henry Parkes
could put him
back in.
Where is he now?
Away from the notes and the
bottles,
settling better in the saddle,
at least feeling the cold,
head splitting.
A couple of days he'd be clear of
it.
The places:
Mooni, Orara,
Narrara,
written of Araluen,
dead daughter and re-assured
they would escape
across the wild, wide waters to
that
other shore.
Heading north.
Greek and Latin.
Turning to face:
Cooranbean,
Christmas Creek.
The damned months of it.
The odd jingle
of bit,
the creakings stopped.
Silence
opens
a great valley,
and it just one of,
part of
Falling with the creeks
the sandstone blurred
brilliant green moss
through gum leaves
almost now,
one supposed,
a traditional green
- if they could see this!
Oaks?
She-oaks!
And the white white bodies of the
gums revolving
in a great dim hall,
sparkling drops –
watch them pass as you fall.
See this!
Persephone's tears?
Magnificence! wonder –
precious, thin, curved
leaves of it!
Plod,
plod in this?
Hear the water,
smell it.
Down there,
that way,
the sea
and a big rock pecked with fishes,
wallabies.
For a visual representation of this poem
'Bellbirds'is exquisite. I think your water moons are just right: sometimes crescents, sometimes full, but always silver. The sounds are beautiful, even from my rather tinny-voiced computer. Thunder particularly commendable! How serendipitous (is that how you spell it?) that there's a thundery storm outside as I read.
ReplyDeleteI think I must learn more about poor HK. The sad-madness of the poem is tantalising and heart-rending.
I am glad you got some pleasure and interest from my representation of Kendall's - could we say 'iconic'? - poem. In any case it is a great favourite. He evokes the New South Wales coastal bush (all of Australia's coastal bush?) so lyrically.
ReplyDelete'October ....
...
Then is the time when the water-moons splendid
Break with their gold, and are scattered or blended
Over the creeks, till the woodlands have warning
...'
I can't help but think the 'water-moons' are a specific flower or seed pod however, I can find no reference to them. That is why I opted for my interpretation of them as light reflected in water.
Kendall had an undeniably terrible life in hard colonial conditions to which he was not suited but I think his life was filled also with ecstatic apprehension of Australia's nature. He helped us enormously to come to terms with the beauty which surrounds us.
I like to think of you listening surrounded by thunder, like a bell-bird safe in the leaves of the myrtle.
Thank you again for your comment Sandra,
I M