Latest Articles
Used as cudgels in divorce actions, domestic violence orders all too often reward perjurers and ruin innocent lives
Sep 19 2024
36 mins
The vice-presidential candidate, like many former critics, came to accept Trump was ahead of the curve on economic nationalism
Sep 18 2024
17 mins
The punditocracy won't admit that, when it comes to Trump's sharp tongue, he's a novice compared to, say, Paul Keating
Sep 18 2024
4 mins
John Whitworth: Four Poems
Love at First Sight in Edinburgh
September rain in Princes Street,
Crowblack umbrellas, splashing feet.
I wore my collar up and you
Were running for a 22.
I’m on that bus, drenched with the weather,
And see you running hell-for-leather.
You grab the pole and swing aboard,
White teeth and laughing eyes. Sweet Lord,
Your golden summer scents the breeze,
I am enamoured of your knees.
Whoever loved who loved not at
First sight? I saw and that was that.
I kissed your grinful, sinful mouth,
Your East, your West, your North, your South,
So supercharged and superfine,
And once miraculously mine.
The years, they slip away like thieves,
Deciduous as autumn leaves.
I see you running, running yet,
And Princes Street all shining wet.
John Whitworth
The Furniture
The furniture sat silent in the room.
The wardrobes would not say what they had seen.
The bed was cold and empty as the tomb.
She flicked the pages of a magazine
For information that it had not got.
Where would she go? She knew she had to go.
What did they want? She knew it was a lot.
How would she pay? Ah, that she didn’t know.
When would they come? Too soon. She was sure of that.
What was the perturbation on the stair?
Was it the cat? She didn’t have a cat?
Why did she feel a thickening in the air?
Why did she startle like a stricken deer?
Why did her eyes look terrified and wild?
What was the twittering shadow drawing near?
Where was the child, the child, the weeping child?
John Whitworth
The Song of the Leopard Shepherd
“Leopard Shepherd on the Desert” is a track by The Underachievers
I am a leopard shepherd
And I shepherd little leopards
By the paradisal river
Where the vine-lined forests shiver
In the jungles of the Congo
Where I sing my shepherd song-o-
Oli-oli-oli-oli-
Oli-oli-oli-oli-
Oli-oli-oli-oli-
O-o-o.
Where the amaranth and moly
Dangle slowly to-and-fro-ly
In their deliquescent clusters
(O the lustres of the clusters!),
With the buzzing of the beeses
In the tall tremendous treeses,
And the chattering of the monkeys
Like a gathering of flunkeys-
Oli-oli-oli-oli-
Oli-oli-oli-oli-
Oli-oli-oli-oli-
O-o-o.
Where the crocodiles are gliding
Up and down and side to siding
In the rancid river water
Where they savage and they slaughter.
There I shepherd little leopards
As a proper leopard shepherd-
Oli-oli-oli-oli-
Oli-oli-oli-oli-
Oli-oli-oli-oli-
O-o-o-o-o.
John Whitworth
The Dead
The dead come drifting through the floors.
They float and bloat beside my bed,
Snuffling around like carnivores,
Drifting and sifting through the floors
They are not comfortable, these dead.
They crowd into my head and stare.
They gnaw my elbows and my knees.
They tangle in my body hair,
Like a miasma in the air,
A thing that seethes and breathes disease.
They will have blood they say. They will.
Have blood beslobbering their beaks.
They clamber on the window sill.
They wish us every kind of ill,
And chatter in excited squeaks.
They flap like bats, like birds they glide.
They hate the living as they must.
They come at us from every side
Till we have nowhere else to hide
Before we crumble into dust.
John Whitworth
The Dead
The dead come drifting through the floors.
They float and bloat beside my bed,
Snuffling around like carnivores,
Creeping and seeping under doors.
They are not comfortable, these dead.
They crowd into my head and stare.
They gnaw my elbows and my knees.
They tangle in my body hair,
Like a miasma in the air,
A thing that seethes and breathes disease.
They will have blood they say. They will.
With blood beslobbering their beaks,
They clamber on the windowsill.
They wish us every kind of ill
And chatter in excited squeaks.
They flap like bats, like birds they glide.
They hate the living as they must.
They come at us from every side
Till we have nowhere else to hide
Before we crumble into dust
John Whitworth
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
