Katherine Spadaro: ‘Black Fur Bookends’, ‘Cracked Candle’ and ‘The Afternoon Panel’
Black Fur Bookends
Crouching next to my little dog I comb her on the balcony, high above the car-studded street. Neat and small she is, with short fur, shiny and dark (and how it sheds on the white apartment tiles); a lover of comfort and admiration, she stands entranced and delighted while I brush her fur. Her black, black fur.
My oldest dog, how big you were! Your rough coat like the wind-frayed grass around Granny’s house, you’d creep inside and wedge under the table, great guilt of presumption around your shoulders … How quiet and true your blackness, in that island where dogs worked and guarded, where sheep weighed on one’s mind: your patience like the sea, returning again.
Katherine Spadaro
Cracked Candle
Brought out from the box it broke in
it stands in the candlestick now
lit. After a stuttering, fitful start,
it grows into glowing. Wax
flows and weeps down its sides,
strengthens its straightening—
spentness shaped into scaffold:
its bentness is burning to beauty.
Katherine Spadaro
The Afternoon Panel
body tired
eyes keep closing
plastic chair not bed
rumble voices
mumble on
don’t know what they said
try to prop
my mind up but
it’s tumbling instead
sliding down
the inside
of my head.
Katherine Spadaro
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins