Graeme Hetherington: Two Poems
Playground Triumph
I dreamt I couldn’t choose which arm
To bowl with at recess and send
The rusty stick-propped battered bit
Of tin flying across the yard,
Miss Smith’s grip hurting my right wrist
During Transcription till she’d swung
Me from the left and I’d knocked down
My father’s middle stump, betrayed
The cack-handedness he’d bequeathed,
Which she said was how Satan wrote.
I woke distressed, recalling that
I’d answered back, when he, beside
Himself yelled “you’re to give up sport
And help me make ends meet, as does
Your brother’s bursary”, with “my
Hat-trick today at school’s worth more!”
Graeme Hetherington
Intimations of a Search for Poems
(West Coast, Tasmania)
I’ve ended up like them, those lone
Old timers fossicking for glints
Of gold in mullock, whom I met
In childhood on the track, and still
Sore from a hiding more than half-
Envied for single lives in shacks,
Who’d ask where I was bound, and seem
Surprised, short-changed by my reply
Of “for the milk and mail”. Perhaps
They knew with all the town, that I,
Not getting on at home, would one
Day prospect too for better things.
Graeme Hetherington
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