Jamie Grant: The Hand of God
The Hand of God
The building-site crane arches high over the highway like a footbridge.
A full-rigged
sailing ship could pass beneath it. Cement mixing trucks pause
in its shadows
—hatched and striped—with drums revolving slowly
like a ball idly
spun from hand to hand, or like the chambers
of a revolver
in a game of Russian roulette. Wearing luminous jackets
and white helmets
workmen swarm over the scaffolding as ants clamber
all over
an animal’s corpse. At ground level, on a public road,
there are dead-eyed
young women holding up paddles to advise us STOP or SLOW.
It looks somehow
as if the crane’s extended beam is being held out toward
a second
crane on a neighbouring building plot, reaching
as on the Sistine ceiling
the hand of God stretches toward a new creation
that is a naked man.
Jamie Grant
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