Mark Edgecombe: To the Glory of God
To the Glory of God
We have what’s called a whakatauki here:
When a big tree falls, another will rise.
Here’s to you, Les, unstraddleable
trunk, Bunyah’s blokey windfall—
thankit be God!—across our path.
Not to be got round, your girth
demands surmounting, as trampers
seeking some humble objective slow,
down pack, plot route and struggle
over, pausing mid-traverse to gaze up
at the mighty O through which the glory
of God winks, blue laddering
in a heaven of green. We’ve another
saying too: Inside each trunk’s
a carving in wait for its master. Here’s
to your rehoisting, new-hewn totem
for Warrang’s scarred skyscape,
viewable from inside Ayers Rock,
from Nullarbor’s Sinai, even from here,
steepling next to “Freud’s cobwebbed
poem”, plinthless and bare, uttering,
in high vernacular, words akin to “Look
upon my works, ye mighty. And repair!”—
like an ordinary rainbow at evening,
a highrise forest’s bardic leavening.
Mark Edgecombe
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