Mort aux Chats -- Peter Porter

Not an Australian poem, but an Australian poet, and I suppose that counts
for something...

(Poem #572) Mort aux Chats There will be no more cats. Cats spread infection, Cats pollute the air, Cats consume seven times their own weight in food a week, Cats were worshipped in decadent societies (Egypt and Ancient Rome); the Greeks had no use for cats. Cats sit down to pee (our scientists have proved it). The copulation of cats is harrowing; they are unbearably fond of the moon. Perhaps they are all right in their own country but their traditions are alien to ours. Cats smell, they can't help it, you notice it going upstairs. Cats watch too much television, they can sleep through storms, they stabbed us in the back last time. There have never been any great artists who were cats. They don't deserve a capital C except at the beginning of a sentence. I blame my headaches and my plants dying on cats. Our district is full of them, property values are falling. When I dream of God I see a Massacre of Cats. Why should they insist on their own language and religion, who needs to purr to make his point? Death to all cats! The Rule of Dogs shall last a thousand years! -- Peter Porter

As George MacBeth puts it, "only a confirmed cat-lover could write such a
charming indictment of the species"...

That said, this is as good a putdown of racist propaganda as any I've seen.
It's the tone of voice that does it, I think - the same mix of populist
rhetoric and vile innuendo, the same blend of twisted logic and warped
facts... Porter takes the caricature to extremes ("I blame my headaches and
my plants dying on cats"), but let's not forget that people have been taken
in by far less rational arguments in the past; the vicious anti-cat
demagoguery may be sidesplittingly funny in its particulars, but it's no
less powerful for that.

And of course, the last sentence (which I did _not_ expect, the first time I
read this poem) puts the whole poem into context - when we finally find out
who the speaker is, we know _precisely_ how much trust to put into his
words.

thomas.

PS. "they stabbed us in the back / last time" is a reference to a phrase
used by Hitler during his ascent to power: "Hitler considered the German
politicians who prematurely ended World War One and established the German
democratic republic to be traitors (the 'November criminals', he called
them); their actions were akin to a 'stab in the back'. In Hitler's mind and
among many Germans, the Army had not been defeated on the battlefield but
had been undermined by political treachery at home."
        -- http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/trial.htm

PPS. I'm also reminded of Snoopy's Kitten Kaboodle stories - equally
'speciesist', and aimed at an equally specific target audience ("PlayBeagle
has bought the entire series" <grin>).

The Death Of The Bird -- A D Hope

Guest poem submitted by Vikram Doctor, who was
actually the person who first suggested the Australian theme to us:

With everyone's eyes turning to Sydney, why not do an Australian theme? I
can't think off-hand of too many Australian poems, but there are good poets
like Les Murray and Peter Porter. And there is this one, which has remained
with me ever since I first read it:

(Poem #571) The Death Of The Bird For every bird there is this last migration; Once more the cooling year kindles her heart; With a warm passage to the summer station Love pricks the course in lights across the chart. Year after year a speck on the map divided By a whole hemisphere, summons her to come; Season after season, sure and safely guided, Going away she is also coming home; And being home, memory becomes a passion With which she feeds her brood and straws her nest; Aware of ghosts that haunt the heart's possession And exiled love mourning within the breast. The sands are green with a mirage of valleys; The palm-tree casts a shadow not its own; Down the long architrave of temple or palace Blows a cool air from moorland scraps of stone. And day by day the whisper of love grows stronger, The delicate voice, more urgent with despair, Custom and fear constraining her no longer, Drives her at last on the waste leagues of air. A vanishing speck in those inane dominions, Single and frail, uncertain of her place. Alone in the bright host of her companions, Lost in the blue unfriendliness of space. She feels it close now, the appointed season: The invisible thread is broken as she flies; Suddenly, without warning, without reason, The guiding spark of instinct winks and dies. Try as she will the trackless world delivers No way, the wilderness of light no sign, The immense and complex map of hills and rivers Mocks her small wisdom with its vast design. And darkness rises from the eastern valleys, And the winds buffet her with their hungry breath, And the great earth, with neither grief not malice, Receives the tiny burden of her death. -- A D Hope

A simple poem, but one that has always impressed me for the quiet way it
builds up in force. Starting from the small presence of the bird getting the
migratory itch, it slowly expands to show her smallness against the
immensity of what she sets out to do.

Then suddenly, without any warning, the thread is terrifyingly cut and it is
our worst nightmare of being totally lost in a blind, indifferent world. And
the last verse is hugely impactful as the the immensity of the world rises
up to overwhelm the bird.

(There is something almost pagan about it, since this is literally as far as
you get from the Biblical "not a sparrow shall fall...").

Vikram.

[thomas adds]

Les Murray wrote 'An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow', a guest poem submitted by
Ron Heard (who's from Queensland, if I remember correctly): poem #387

Peter Porter has featured several times on the Minstrels (I happen to like
his work); check out
'Instant Fish', poem #64
'Japanese Jokes', poem #198
'Your Attention Please', poem #222

Come, Night; Come, Romeo -- William Shakespeare

Guest poem sent in by Ronald Lundquist

The stunning beauty of this passage never fails to floor me.  It is an
excerpt from Act 3 Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet speaking.

(Poem #570) Come, Night; Come, Romeo Come, night; come, Romeo; come, thou day in night; For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night Whiter than new snow on a raven's back. Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow'd night, Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun. -- William Shakespeare

Commentary: Biographically we all know about Shakespeare or Bacon or
whomever (I believe Shakespeare wrote the works attributed to him).

I became aware of this passage when I rented an audiocassette of the great
speeches of Robert Kennedy. He quoted

        when he shall die,
        Take him and cut him out in little stars,
        And he will make the face of heaven so fine
        That all the world will be in love with night

in a speech about his brother John shortly after John's death.
It is interesting to note that that the last line from the full excerpt
above is recycled in Webber's "Phantom of the Opera" in the song "Music of
the Night":

        Slowly, gently, night unfurls its splendour
        Grasp it, sense it, tremulous and tender
        Turn your face away from the garish light of day
        Turn your thoughts away from cold, unfeeling light
        And listen to the music of the night. . .

Ronald J. Lundquist

The Great Grey Plain -- Henry Lawson

And, for a rather different point of view...

(Poem #569) The Great Grey Plain Out West, where the stars are brightest, Where the scorching north wind blows, And the bones of the dead gleam whitest, And the sun on a desert glows -- Yet within the selfish kingdom Where man starves man for gain, Where white men tramp for existence -- Wide lies the Great Grey Plain. No break in its awful horizon, No blur in the dazzling haze, Save where by the bordering timber The fierce, white heat-waves blaze, And out where the tank-heap rises Or looms when the sunlights wane, Till it seems like a distant mountain Low down on the Great Grey Plain. No sign of a stream or fountain, No spring on its dry, hot breast, No shade from the blazing noontide Where a weary man might rest. Whole years go by when the glowing Sky never clouds for rain -- Only the shrubs of the desert Grow on the Great Grey Plain. From the camp, while the rich man's dreaming, Come the `traveller' and his mate, In the ghastly dawnlight seeming Like a swagman's ghost out late; And the horseman blurs in the distance, While still the stars remain, A low, faint dust-cloud haunting His track on the Great Grey Plain. And all day long from before them The mirage smokes away -- That daylight ghost of an ocean Creeps close behind all day With an evil, snake-like motion, As the waves of a madman's brain: 'Tis a phantom NOT like water Out there on the Great Grey Plain. There's a run on the Western limit Where a man lives like a beast, And a shanty in the mulga That stretches to the East; And the hopeless men who carry Their swags and tramp in pain -- The footmen must not tarry Out there on the Great Grey Plain. Out West, where the stars are brightest, Where the scorching north wind blows, And the bones of the dead seem whitest, And the sun on a desert glows -- Out back in the hungry distance That brave hearts dare in vain -- Where beggars tramp for existence -- There lies the Great Grey Plain. 'Tis a desert not more barren Than the Great Grey Plain of years, Where a fierce fire burns the hearts of men -- Dries up the fount of tears: Where the victims of a greed insane Are crushed in a hell-born strife -- Where the souls of a race are murdered On the Great Grey Plain of Life! -- Henry Lawson

If "the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know", they
were wasted on Dawson, whose view of the Australian Bush is considerably
more dismal. Dismal, but no less expressive - indeed, as a general rule,
poets attain to far greater flights of eloquence in their tirades than in
their encomia.

Lawson's verse does not, in general, attain the effortless ease that
characterises that of his contemporary and friend Banjo Paterson.
Nonetheless, they are just as energetic and vivid, and when he hits his
stride, as in today's poem, the results can be impressive and haunting. Too,
his dissonant voice appears refreshingly original when set against the large
body of 'back to nature' poetry that every age and country seems to have
produced limitless quantities of.

Biography:

Lawson, Henry (Archibald)
b. June 17, 1867, near Grenfell, N.S.W., Australia
d. Sept. 22, 1922, Abbotsford, N.S.W.
Australian writer of short stories and balladlike verse noted for his
realistic portrayals of bush life.

He was the son of a former Norwegian sailor and an active feminist. Hampered
by deafness from the time he was nine and by the poverty and unhappiness in
his family, he left school at 14 to help his father as a builder. About 1884
he moved to Sydney, where the Bulletin published his first stories and
verses (1887-88). During those years he worked for several newspapers but
also spent much time wandering. Out of these experiences came material for
his vivid, realistic writing, which, by its often pessimistic blend of
pathos and irony, captured some of the spirit of Australian working life.
His later years were increasingly unhappy, and the quality of his writing
deteriorated.

        -- EB

Links:

For more of Lawson's work, see
[broken link] http://www.chariot.net.au/~dcampbel/hl/index.htm

For a biography, and several other links, see
[broken link] http://www.acn.net.au/articles/lawson/lawsonlinks.htm

In 1892, Australian poetry was enriched by a spirited exchange of verse
between Paterson, Lawson and various other poets.
http://www.uq.edu.au/~mlwham/banjo/bush_controversy.html

Theme:

There has been a disappointing lack of response to my call for Australian
guest poems. If nothing else, a suggestion for the third poem would be
welcomed, preferably from a more recent poet.

-martin

Especially when the October wind -- Dylan Thomas

(Poem #568) Especially when the October wind Especially when the October wind With frosty fingers punishes my hair, Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire And cast a shadow crab upon the land, By the sea's side, hearing the noise of birds, Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks, My busy heart who shudders as she talks Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words. Shut, too, in a tower of words, I mark On the horizon walking like the trees The wordy shapes of women, and the rows Of the star-gestured children in the park. Some let me make you of the vowelled beeches, Some of the oaken voices, from the roots Of many a thorny shire tell you notes, Some let me make you of the water's speeches. Behind a post of ferns the wagging clock Tells me the hour's word, the neural meaning Flies on the shafted disk, declaims the morning And tells the windy weather in the cock. Some let me make you of the meadow's signs; The signal grass that tells me all I know Breaks with the wormy winter through the eye. Some let me tell you of the raven's sins. Especially when the October wind (Some let me make you of autumnal spells, The spider-tongued, and the loud hill of Wales) With fists of turnips punishes the land, Some let me make of you the heartless words. The heart is drained that, spelling in the scurry Of chemic blood, warned of the coming fury. By the sea's side hear the dark-vowelled birds. -- Dylan Thomas

A marvellously dense, evocative poem - Dylan Thomas at his dazzling
best.

The central conceit is simple enough: the poet, walking in his beloved
Welsh countryside, makes a present to his sweetheart of all the things
he sees ("Some let me make you of the meadow's signs"). Only, since he
is, after all, a poet, his gift takes the form of words - his "busy
heart ...  sheds the syllabic blood".

Of course, the idea of words as a gift is not new to Dylan Thomas;
indeed, it's central to the Welsh bardic tradition to which he owes so
much. What _is_ different is the way Thomas expresses himself:
everything he sees from within his "tower of words" is transformed into
language; thus we have vowelled beeches, oaken voices, the water's
speeches, dark-vowelled birds, spider-tongued autumnal spells, the loud
hills of Wales... In any other writer, the adjectives would appear
incongruous, sometimes ludicrously so. In Thomas, though, they're
magical.

A second theme running through today's poem (and indeed, through much of
Dylan Thomas' work) is the passage of time: the "crabbing sun" makes men
old; the bare branches and "winter sticks" tell of seasons passing; the
"shafted disk" (i.e., the sundial) does the same, but on a smaller
scale...

thomas.

[Links]

Dylan Thomas is one of my favourite poets (Martin's, too), and we've
covered a fair bit of his work in the past.

'Prologue' is very similar to today's poem in its descriptive detail; I
talk more about the _sound_ of Thomas' poetry in the accompanying essay.
Both poem and commentary can be found at poem #14

'Fern Hill' is an exquisitely joyous work; it's also a showcase for
Thomas' mastery of compressed metaphor. You can read it at poem #138

Very similar to 'Fern Hill' (and equally good) is 'Poem in October', poem #225

For sheer _density_ of word and sound, 'Under Milk Wood' is hard to
beat; along with the poem there's a (longish) piece on the difference
between denotation and connotation in poetry. It's archived at poem #270

The theme of life being magically transformed into art is most famously
addressed in Yeats' 'Sailing to Byzantium':

 Once out of nature I shall never take
 My bodily form from any natural thing,
 But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
 Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
 To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
 Or set upon a golden bough to sing
 To lords and ladies of Byzantium
 Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

(The entire poem is at poem #21).