In cornfields elsewhere, so remembered though not so high as an elephants eye, images pressed round as a hotplate suggest some mystery or midnight vigil; this is what we wish, to stamp threat onto the inexplicable, seeking out totems and to hold the dance of the primitive sacred: this city, too, let it stand as Icon.
O to wish upon a falling space shuttle! The sky tries hard to reveal itself as bluestone, but temperature and wrappings of cloud are against it. Rain falls hard as luck. Here you will see them lift up, a squadron of pigeons swinging to gun the light, wings ablaze, the bulky horizon thunderous where thunder lies cognisant. The Great Dividing Range runs this way and I am on the leeside toward the sea. The setting sun awakens our ancestral demand for bonfires big as cities, and a leisurely parade of gulls passing overhead mistake the darkening hours for seacliffs.
These coastal towns boast the best burgers, the newest surf club while the RSL bends to the heavy metal swell which runs the raft of every sea-slap every weekend. The short, broad streets are abandoned early to the blue phosphorescence of the TV and the evening rustle of newspapers. Tomorrow, of course, is uninhabited and fresh as a childs drawing. Further on through the minutes someone is hard at a hammer as if wanting to be let in. A news bulletin tells of avenues long as decades in a steepled town where tanks gather, ready to break through a hay barn in Kosovo. (Remember the Revolutionary Poet who broke through a crowd?) No, this is only a rusted keel upended in the quarter-acre back yard. Not by some turbulence round Cape Horn but the tedium of a bankrupt dream loose as a cloud. The family seams have now sprung apart and the kids school the public bars. A day in the round for the father who breaks through the top-shelf like a picket-line. At the local cinema watch the astronaut yawn, unaware the alien prepares to storm the spaceport wordless as a threat. Its dusk here, mist drowns streetlights, the earth for a time puts aside its hunger, and a delayed flight fills in for the evening star of Autumn.
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements are due to Writers Radio, 5UV Adelaide and ABC, 2XX Canberra for broadcasting a number of these poems.
Many of the poems in this book first appeared in the following magazines:
Aabye/New Hope International (UK), The Antigonish Review(Canada), Antipodes (USA), The Weekend Australian Review,The Canberra Times, The Capilano Review (Canada), Cyphers(Republic of Ireland), The Dalhousie Review (Canada),Encore (Australia) The Fiddlehead (Canada), Hobo (Aus-tralia), Imago (Australia), Iota (UK), JAAM (NZ), Jacket(Australia), Landfall (NZ), Links (UK), the New ZealandListener, Meanjin (Australia), New Coin Poetry (South Af-rica), OzLit, Poetry Ireland Review (Republic of Ireland),Poetry NZ, Salient (NZ), SideWaLK (Australia), Southerly(Australia), Southern Ocean Review (NZ), The Sydney Morn-ing Herald, Takahe (NZ), Tinfish (USA), Trout (NZ), Voices(Australia), Wascana Review (Canada).
Special thanks to David Sears of PAPERWORK, Melbourne, publishers of my text-based poster, S Y D N E Y T O W E R 2 0 0 0, a high quality art-work designed for the international market, for his generous support in the pro- duction of this book.
My gratitude to Pina Ricciu for her generous financial assistance, and to Mark Pirie for his strong belief in this book and personal commitment in marketing Unmanned successfully throughout New Zealand and Australia.