Robert Rothman: ‘Scimitar’ and ‘The Bees’
Scimitar
It is always there, unseen until you spot it
in the night sky, that dagger of pain that takes
your breath away, like an adagio where each
note hurts but too beautiful to resist. The moment
before you were humming along. Now, stunned
and bleeding some ancient hurt that every human
who has ever lived has known, you are wordless,
the vast black sky dotted with pinpricks of light,
raw and razor-sharp, into your unknown heart.
Robert Rothman
The Bees
If you lie in the grass, stretched out like
a jungle cat, all muscles relaxed and body
melting into the green, they will come, landing
on you like a hundred miniature airborne
crafts descending, the black pincers darting skin
like acupuncture needles, their pulsing
proboscises probing the scent rising from
flesh, you a flowering plant to be sipped and made
more. They won’t sting, and if you turn over
slowly the bees will rotate in the same rhythm
and resettle. Your nose is an invitation
to enter, eyes opening and closing—petals
to buzz about. Kept down by their swarm of
sound, a whirring that mesmerizes ears
and mind, the will to rise is numbed, as if
a hand gently pushes against the chest
if such thought arises. Thick in the nest of
swirling wings and whishing, whizzing, droning
music, you surrender what tension remains
and fall asleep. Sleeping Beauty could not
have fallen under a spell more deliciously potent.
Robert Rothman
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.
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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
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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
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2 mins