Kevin Bennett: ‘My Vegetative Love’
My Vegetative Love
Amaranthus mignonette cyclamen
The raised worn elbow of her cardigan
Nemophila clematis primula
A tensing of her brow with eyes aside
Cross-referencing to some thought or other
Centaurea nasturtium impatiens
I might’ve been tempted to prune the subject
(As I only know the meaning of mulch)
But her voice turned everything interesting
And her eyes were an open-book exam
And her poor, pale, left earlobe seemed to plead
For its secretly missing wobbling pearl
Pieris gardenia lunaria
And succulents still with clinging dewdrops.
When she’d finished, we both went back, along
The winding green-about-the-gills brick path
With mixed rotting-brown and freshly dropped blooms
And past hedges delicately red-tipped …
It’s not just something one can clip on, but
A presence whose mere presence is pleasure,
Interplay of fingernails and petals,
A spiralling inflation of the senses.
Can I say feminine and not be lynched?
I pace the pattern round my Persian rug
And circle…
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