Pin Boy
Till eleven o’clock you are perfumed
in the sweat you were born with.
At five, you stink of the sweat
you deserve.
No relief from the heat.
Just the melting
of external barriers.
A slow leak has the sun’s
white hot salinity
spilling into the horizon’s water table.
Coloured dusts of landscape
scatter
under the wind’s rug-beater.
Sounds seem
a sepia enactment
of summer’s past
the slow bark of an axe
the crackly dial tone
of a chainsaw
a suburb away.
A blowfly in the kitchen
stops and starts
too punch drunk to remember
the rhythm
of its drone.
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