A Letdown
Venerable city, he called it,
and though he went far from Teviot Row
it would always be home—
the heart remembered by a lad of parts.
His northern circumstance, in all its flux.
Disembodied land of the mind,
it broke like a cloudburst on his plans
to walk the earth’s low curves.
Why should it be difficult to get back?
Hadn’t his father given him a map
so that arriving from the past
he might step into the living moment?
There were nettles at the gate
and in the great house a boy rehearsing
reasons for his lifelong trip
across the trapdoor of the mind.
Home was the House of Shaws,
a place of Gothic design and catastrophic
letdown. “To set a stranger mounting
was to send him straight to his death.”
Night lengthens on his prospects
and those figures standing in the garden.
He has gone to live his calling
where only the irretrievable can be saved.
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