Luke Whitington: Message with no address
Message with no address
For Louise Gluck
Like a letter opened
Years later, the poem read
Like a forgotten confidence, words blurred and faded
From a friend you knew for a while
From a friend across the border of another life—
Her voice is audible
Through softening light
Tinkling amongst the whispering of leaves
It must be winter there, you surmise
Were these messages that waited for an answer
Or echoes murmuring after an ending
The real endings like leaves suspended around her head.
The stars shine down gilding the midnight grass
Can I hear silence and a season moving off in a different arc?
Do I hear the drone of an echo from the neck of a beached bottle?
Did the waves roll, sway and wash your voice all the way to here?
Thoughts idle—did the sea drift timelessly
With your time, your words, your place
In time, to tell me something, something to carry away
Your yearning, your whispers of greeting now kept with me
Transported as far as this shore, a voice echoing
Staying afloat, in the roars of waves, in the crescendos of time.
Luke Whitington
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