Stone Variations; Fancy Flattery
Stone Variations
He moved by night. He went alone.
He crept through corridors of stone
Into her reveries of bone.
He’d drawn a blank. The bird had flown.
His friends were fled, his cover blown
And this time he was on his own.
In Peter’s Chair the Pope was Joan.
She cursed him in an undertone:
You reap the crap that you have sown.
He wouldn’t listen to the crone.
He heard his own testosterone.
Out there beyond the panic zone
The night was right as pheromone,
A scattering of starlight thrown
Across the void of the unknown,
The wind became a sousaphone
Beneath the howling of the drone,
His homicidal chaperon.
Her wildernesses overgrown,
Her staunch, indomitable moan,
He guessed, though he was never shown.
He moved by night. He went alone.
Fancy Flattery
You are so very wonderful,
So no way botch and blunderful,
Your fame so full and thunderful,
I worship at your shrine.
All excellence is made of you,
I kiss the very shade of you,
I swear I am afraid of you
And yet I wish you mine.
I scorn all filthy flattering,
The barren verbal battering
And lamentable nattering
That prattles just to please.
I’d fight the knights of Malory,
Refuse a banker’s salary,
Subsist on half a calorie,
I swear upon my knees.
Your Love is as imperious
As Nero or Tiberius,
And makes me so delirious
That no-one else will do.
The whole wide world your oyster is.
You’d make a bishop boisterous.
No monk would tarry cloisterous
If he could be with you.
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