Melaleuca 049

7/28/2019 Melaleuca 049

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/melaleuca-049 1/18

Melaleuca

Number 48: June 2013 Editor: Phillip A. Ellis

Table of Contents

Phillip A. Ellis Martin and the Hidden Birds 3

Phillip A. Ellis Music, as From the Spheres 13

Jonathan Hadwen Five-Day Test 14

Jonathan Hadwen I Have Not Been Sleeping 15

Jonathan Hadwen [“I read so much poetry that day,”] 16

Max Merckenschlager Mulling over Mafeking 17

Sam Orton Dream Girl 18

All works are copyright by their respective creators, 2013; the arrangement of this collection is

copyright by Phillip A. Ellis, 2013.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works2.5 Australia License <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/au/>.

You are free to make and pass along copies, so long as you do not charge money or goods for the

copy, and as long as this and other issues remain intact.

Submission guidelines: email 2-5 poems, any length, any style, any genre to

[email protected] in the body of a single RTF or DOC attachment. No bios are needed;

cover letters are welcome. We accept previously published material and simultaneous submissions;

if work is published prior to its appearance in Melaleuca you must advise us accordingly, so that

proper attribution can be made.

1

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/au/

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/au/

7/28/2019 Melaleuca 049


2

7/28/2019 Melaleuca 049


Martin and the Hidden Birds

Martin at night, sees the morning awaken

despite his lack of living sleep. The east

is lightened. He can see the furrowed glow,

mackerel backs of clouds of ice, that hover

under the sunless sky. I'd like to saythat he had woken early, burned in a blaze

so swift and sudden sleep was swiftly shucked off

alike the covers of his bed. But breath

was so awake, aware since faring forth

into the lengthened night, whose lights were suns

so far, so small, so slight the sky was darkness

transparent. There are certain hours that sleep

is ever certain. Yet such sleep was absent,

the ever lengthened hours of passing darkness,

and he, at night, sees the morning awaken

as though the poem of life has stopped in time,and writes itself a static image. Dawn

is a fair while away. The light is lighter

than darkness, hovers high. As birds awaken

and sing, awaken and are hidden, something

reminds his thoughts of swallows swelling skies

with birdsong, massing by the seaside's pines

beneath a sky like this within the past

he has not known. This glow, that's sweet and soft,

and drifts with lines of clouds. The birds that clamour

this dawn that's false are yet the birds that work

and lurk in daylight. He is feeling heavy,

his weary body sinking back, his spirits

arisen to the sky of light, like verses

that sing of sorrows sweetly. Light so light

it swims to rise above the upper world

is such a sweetness, that it seems his heart

would break to breathe it. Open up, and listen,

O you who hear this, hearts whose art is living,

and dream the opalescence of the light,

the window wakened to the sky outside it,

the sound of many birds at song at once,and under it the darkened world that wakens

without a speaking person turning action

to human presence. We could easily dream

the world awake without a man or human,

the houses set to soon decay and moulder,

as is the dream of some who dwell here, waking

into the dream that is the day. He waits

under the sky of pearl and thinks not this:

he does not think of humans passing, neither

does his mind turn on thoughts of verse that takes

his self into the heart of being, words

3

7/28/2019 Melaleuca 049


and memories of making music, catching

the image in a lens of light and glass

alike. His life before and since exists

but, for this poem alone, it's focused, written

into a maze of words whose burden writes

within these lines what burdens might well must:

the dust to dance when sunlight streams through windowswill dance at last, but now... but now... the dawn

that is not dawn has come, arisen, lightened

the eastern skies where the hidden ocean waits,

that breaks upon the shores of Moreton Bay,

from whence it has arisen out of time

uncounted, time that flows past fidget wheels

and hangs suspended in the interval

between another's five bells ringing. Lighten

the skies of his, O dawn that is no dawn,

bring forth the birdsongs. With a word, they sing

their songs. And somewhere birds are always singingit is said. Somewhere dawn arrives, and with it

that chance of someone wakened, witness, given

that there are many people. Here the witness

to the dawn, songs, has slept not, seeking shelter,

has let the world emerge from darkness, starlight

towards a blue opaque. Forgiving dreamers

who never seek to see this moment seems

a waste of words, a wasteland. Something shifts:

is it dream, dreamer? Is it time? I know not

what shifts or seems to shift, be it time's seconds,

be it old world or new, renewed. He thinks not

of such: he is awake and witness, always,

the way that words and verse are witness also,

the way the poems we pause in serve as witness

to something other, sometimes, ways of seeing

whether what's seen is word or thought, or dawn,

or the false dawn, the birdsongs' burdens ringing

into the early air. I shall not share this

unhidden burden, shall not, superstitious,

speak of the message you will read and see,

for who am I to dictate anythingabout this poem, save when its set when the sun

has yet to rise, the sky a mess of birds

that sing while hidden. He, as yet, has knowledge

of light and liquid music, not what's gone

between the poet and the poet's ears,

its audience. From whence shall birdsong sound

aloud? He lies abed. His head's on pillow,

and he is wrapped in bedding. Outside, light

lightens the sky, and lends it substance, gives

solidity. The solid sky is such

a sweetest, softest blue. And it is ribbed

4

7/28/2019 Melaleuca 049


with rows of clouds so cold, so high they're ice

and ribs of ice within the air. The birds,

unseen, are singing: let them sing forever

within the moment stilled by verse that works

the moment over many pages, written

and spoken. Let them sing the while, in streets,

the wheeled machines are sweeping trash away,and washing down the roads that glow with blackness

from tarmac, parse the city roads since decades,

a place in parts of some traditions, rich

with the heard songs of wakened birds that call

the dawn towards the shore alike a magus,

and into being, so the sleepers wake

not knowing how the day begins. I take

such moments when the birds, at song, are speaking

in tongues to his that yearned-for sleep's abandoned,

the way that sleep has often twined the covers

of sleeping beds around this sleeper's limbs,the way that sleep has come before, unbidden

and silent. Sweet is sleep in such a time

as this. And sweet when missing. Time is life,

some say, and others: time is enemy

to life; I know not. I only know the sleeper

abandoned, as the subject of this poem,

the lightening of sky within the east,

the clamour of the singing birds, like swallows

that may well treat the streets of Coolangatta

as home for choruses that call the dawn

to rise and strike alike a breaker, know

the early morning trucks that clean the streets

into the next day, when the world awakens

and, in his eyes and mine, the eyes of sleepers

abandoned of their sleep, the long beginning

is marked by solitary cars regarding

the traffic lights and roundabouts with thought

akin to negligence. Such waking worlds

are often thought to represent the death

of humans. Not within this world they're not,

not daily. Sometimes I have dreamt such streetsand sometimes trod them. In this world of poem,

these elements and others gather, making

a minor world, a world of his that's sleepless

despite the clink of bottles in the gutters

that seem as if they just exist between

the greenery of day, shadows of night,

the time of many suns, the time of one

that banishes the many. Reader, listen

and you will hear the early traffic. Listen

and you will hear the calls of birds. And listen

and you will hear the rolling bottles mention

5

7/28/2019 Melaleuca 049


the world is hard and plays its note. And maybe

the world that wakens wakens in your heart

the sort of art that's worked in words, and wakens

a sort of sensed and senseless beauty. Truth

exists in truth and fiction. Let me gather

my images and offer them in order

unto you. One: the sleeper sleepless. Two:a world without without the certain poet

prowling the empty streets, poetry ready

to capture time as images of words

and sounds alike. In such a silent moment

the artist is a poet, poet artist,

and poetry aspires the art of snatching

what is invisible and makes it real

from what is real, is also visible

as well. In such a moment, we are captured

(or we were captured) on a film reversed

in colour, shade. And then we're made on paper within the dark. I ask the poet watching;

is this the duty of the poet? To snatch

the image onto paper, make it last

beyond the moment even when it enters

the realm of time? Perhaps I'm folding time

into a torus, strange attractor. Reader,

and you who hear this, think upon this thought

the while my mind returns to birds at song

while hidden in the world. I give this image,

an image others find in magpies' carols

deep in a field of fog in mountain towns

at dawn. I've been there. Some may find it elsewhere,

the light that breaks above the swells that break

upon the sands of Wollongong. Or elsewhere,

the light that lays its hands upon the head

of Whangarei and blesses it. Such places

others have written, I have written, roiling

the magic moment when the light awakens

to birdsong, skies that lighten, turn opaque

and see the empty streets, streetsweepers cleaning,

abandoned bottles rolling, clinking, catsthat are strays moving from the mouths of drains

across the roads to other paths. In moments

as this there once were metal bins whose lids

would clatter down when knocked off, as the cats

and other strays would hunt up food, as only

the sleepless hear them. Sleepless people, yes,

alike this poet and this artist within

his bed, these lines alike. He is my subject

awake beyond the call of sleep, and sleepless

alike. He knew the night, and now the dawn

is closer, closing, so he listens closely

6

7/28/2019 Melaleuca 049


to the world waking, breaking songs with birds

the ways that others break their bread, the cast

of life. That other cast is all asleep

by now. But now―why name his name?―he lies

awake within the wake of time, and tries

to count the moments left. He dares not lift

his sight to count the time that's tamed by clocks,and named with numbers. Fidget time. This time

he holds back, lest it seems that time will slow

unto the point of stillness. And in points

of stillness, cats come creeping out of drains

and into the streets, seeking, finding hunger

a void and burden. In refrains as this,

their voice is stilled, they do not mew to humans,

but often feed upon our wasted food

when it is found at last, for in the past

the cats at night would clatter lids from bins

so only sleepless people heard them, cursingand often seeking respite in their cliches,

when at that certain hour when the sun

was still unrisen, in this very hour

when the sky lightens while waiting for the sun,

when vehicles wash the streets with brushes, water,

the poet lies wrapped within his bed,

not thinking of the other poet writing

the words of cat and birdsong, light and cleaner,

for time is like a tangle in which thought

is often tumbled, snarled and caught alike

a tuft of cloud within the sky. Such skies

that I have known! Above this very scene,

this very moment, serried ranks of ice

are covering the sky, so high they seem

untouched by any thought of anything

below them. Such is as it always seems

to one who dreams in poetry and fire,

but such as he who sees this sky of lightening

and serried cloud will see it as another

thought in the light of being. Such a sky

evokes the moving world, the turning lands,the oceans knowing day and night alike,

the air above a liquid pressing down

alike the belly of a beast, that purrs

and crouches lower, tabby-furred with white

and grey. And days have opened like this day,

the solitary cars in empty streets,

the cleaners slower, sweeping with their washes

of water, the cats that come out hungry, wary,

and over everything that sky, that very

sky of light within the east that knows not

the sun and stars, that seems so light and easy,

7

7/28/2019 Melaleuca 049


and yet's opaque, that hides the many suns

above, beneath, beyond, until it's gone

and driven off by swollen suns. When time

had left the poet bereft, robbed of sleep

and ease of eyes that rest in darkness, time

had brought the poet here, where other feet

would wander in the silence of the streetsthat greet the waking day and the false dawn,

as once the poet who composed these lines

would seek to rise on waking, make his way

into the cool and clarity, and find

a world awakening and made anew

after the night dissolves towards the day,

and on the very threshold, Janus-wise,

the eyes of the wakened poet see the world

of skies that brighten, tabby with their clouds

that sit so high they seem a dream of ice,

and underneath their watching eyes the worldis barely known to human eyes, for save

for sleepy-minded people sweeping streets,

a solitary driver riding roughly

over the roundabouts, and marking lights

with sprays of blue exhaust, ignoring red

green and amber alike. This sort of sight

notes not the cats that crawl out, into silence

save for the songs of birds in hidden chorus,

that ever-present chorus swelling skywards

from hidden places on the earth beneath it,

the houses and the buildings silhouettes

against the lightened sky, with streetlamps lit

and still. The air around this place is chilly,

as though this were a certain season dreaming

within the year (and well it might), when night

is longer, stronger and a wealthy dreamer

(one profligate with time and points of light),

but, in a city such as this or Sydney,

the lights of night are hidden as the glow

of city streets and buildings shouts them down,

so that the lower clouds can baste their belliesin light, such that they glow at night. He knows this

but does not think this, seeing darkness veiled

by light, at night, now dawn, so deep that stars

become a dream that seems unreal, a vision

saved for the country visits, saved for blackouts

that claim as much as they can claim, with conscience,

and save for pictures risen out of dream,

the dream of media, the dream of minds

that make such images in sleep, a sleep

he does not know this night and moment. Moving

along their tracks are trains, perhaps, but unseen

8

7/28/2019 Melaleuca 049


and driven into nescience, as though sent

from night to dawn, and so too humans, night

to dawn and day, and many waking. Listen

as he is doing, and that Janus-moment

of the day's threshold's marked by music thrown

from the birds' throats, and out into the world

that wakes. And so the poet lies awake:he sees this world awaken, written deep

with image and with sound, and maybe sighs,

and sees the sky that lightens to opaqueness

within the east, as, with his thoughts, the whole

is heard as complicated. Time to write

this waking world? Perhaps. But time to listen

to birdsong building visions of a dream

that is the waking world without his window,

a world, it seems, that changes as the light

from moonlit nights to pre-dawn opalescence,

from the dawn's blue, to morning, noon and after,the light of sunset, dusk, to night again,

as caught in paintings of cathedrals dreaming

the day away in Nineteenth Century France,

and so the cycle goes, and so the sleepers

from sleep to waking life, to sleep again,

except when, here, the certain sleeper's awake

and catches glimpses of the worlds without his

and thus the flow of thought, the stream reflecting

the world alike a mirror that transforms

and that transmutes from world to verse. Again

the poet seems to cease the flow of time,

so that his thoughts return to what is seen

or witnessed. Time to dream. Or to take stock

of what the world reveals beneath the skies

of opalescent light, and so it seems

the world without is catalogued in turn,

as elements occur: the cloud-striped sky,

that is a blue so sweet it seems opaque

in ways that are as striking as the thought

itself; streetsweepers cleaning roads with water

in council machines; cats that creep from cover,from drains; the clink of bottles; a car passing

without a thought for traffic lights, or even

for roundabouts; and, over all, the songs

of many birds at once, the everpresent,

the ever-beautiful and moving songs

of many hidden birds behind the darkened

streets with streetlamps lit, the silhouettes

of homes and buildings, air as clear and sharp

as memories of eucalypts at morning

within the bush, and all this happening,

impressed upon the poet, worth returning

9

7/28/2019 Melaleuca 049


again, again, a fine lietmotif spun

unlike the thoughts this world's corrupt and evil,

unlike the thoughts the flesh is corrupt and evil,

for here there is a clarity of vision,

a poignant beauty piercing sky and poet

alike. And everything that happens happens

within a timeless moment, like a bubblethe stream of time has set before the present

before it catches, snatches up and passes

into the past, remaining beautiful

among the weeks and days of grey and grinding

mediocrity. Time will take it up,

and soon away, but while it stays a moment,

then, poet, feel the unity of life

and being, art and beauty, catch your breath

and breathe again when all has passed. Away

the moment passes, soon enough; away

the bubble passes, caught in the stream's flow,whether the stream one that may have held a spider

upon its floor, its back a silver bubble

of captured air, whether the stream had flowed

underneath a bridge beside a path

in Armidale, or whether it were older,

all in the lives of others, ever flowing

towards the oceans of our lives, that lie

beyond the bourns of Sydney Harbour, others

that he, or I, or you have ever known

before, or now, or since. Such are the ways

of streams, flowing unto the ocean, flowing

like time towards the past, that greater ocean

a certain writer said is real, is all

we have. This world is real, and what seems real

is ever, always the past, whether by seconds,

whether by less, and so we dress within it,

and so the poet lies within his bed,

his head unfilled by thoughts except that world

without his, opaque sky fretted with blue,

the sun as yet unrisen, cats, and cars,

and cleaners. And so on. Time, you see, will take this,will take this up alike a bubble, turn it

and take it towards the ocean of the past

that waits to take all bubbles. Let it flow,

O sleepless dreamer, let the moment catch

before your fingers, let it slip away so,

flowing and onwards into the vast past

that takes the sky of blue and icen clouds

and makes it memory, and takes the birdsong

hidden in shadows, makes it memory,

and takes the silhouettes of buildings, makes

it memory, the clink of bottles made

10

7/28/2019 Melaleuca 049


of glass, and makes it memory, the cats

that crawl out from the drains, and sprint and go

across the roads, and makes them memory,

the drivers of the solitary cars

that parse the traffic lights and roundabouts

without a thought for others, makes them, yes,

a memory, alike the memoriesthat bundle up together, make the bubble

that catches for a moment before his fingers

then bobs away. Time flows, this way, as Slessor

once had written, free from fidget wheels,

the cogs and ratchets making up the workings

of mundane clocks of Earth. This bubble's worth

for his? I cannot count it out in coins,

nor make a prophecy that it may last,

for such is not this poem's concern. My dream

is in this poem, it is this poem: the text,

it is this poem's intention. So it goesthis morning, prior to the dawn, the poet

stolen from sleep, lying awake and weary

within his bed, the sleep that's fled from his

a hidden home for dreams he may not spin

or ever see again, caught in his bedding,

dreading the weary day to follow, finding

that prior to the dawn the sky that held

transparency that, in another sky,

would hold up a world's worth of stars and planets,

such that he'd see in other times and places,

and in the sky that deepens, turns opaque,

a herringbone of clouds made out of ice,

and high, so high they cannot bear a cloud

of rain, the sky a lighter shade of blue

that's luminous, and sweet. Within the streets

below the sky, there's signs of life: though people

drive an isolated car, ignoring

the traffic lights and roundabouts, although

streetsweepers clean the streets, so bottles clink

against the edges of the gutters, no-one

has come to walk the streets, as he might walk,another time, between the buildings wrapt

in shadow, silhouettes against the sky,

under the streetlamps, breathing in the cold

whilst cats are scattering away from drains

within his presence, over all the songs,

the hidden birdsongs sung and wrung out, ringing

out of the throats of countless singers, rising

into the sunless sky, into his heart,

the heart that lies upon his bed and beats

within his body, such a pulse of blood

that seems a drumbeat of a tide that breaks

11

7/28/2019 Melaleuca 049


upon the very edge of sound, that hears,

against the coming day those songs, those songs

that seem, within his world, a furling forth

of lifeforce, beauty given voice, rejoicing

and dominating everything around his

self. Let us end, then, upon the songs, the voices

of ancient beings bringing notes and bringinga throat that greets the coming day, as though

to sway the moments that will follow, flowing,

and with their voice in blended chorus. Listen,

O poet, listen and let sweep these songs,

these songs that seem a simple gift of life

unto the poet on his bed, the sleepless,

the subject, the poet I have named, here,

upon the very start, the very end,

the alpha and omega of these lines,

the very first, the very last, so closes

this poem about the poet whose name is Martin. Phillip A. Ellis

12

7/28/2019 Melaleuca 049


Music, as From the Spheres

I once would hear, in younger years,

the strains of music, as from the spheres,

and I would lift my face in joy

as would any enraptured boy

for whom all mundane melodies cloy.

And I then sought the fairer vowel

that blots the world's despairing howl,

so I'd the sonnet's silver trace

to heal the comet-battered face

of moons and planets of all space.

And though I shaped my odes of flame,

when morning came their ashes remained:

and, casting ashes to the wind,

I feared my heart had risen, sinnedagainst the gods unknown and limned.

But I am nothing more than man,

a little thing to praise or damn,

a little thing to even praise

for muddling through such fleeting days

as swiftly pass, and never stay.

I have not heard such music since,

and I would die to return thence,

and I would the phoenix burn my heart

to capture, with my ashen art,

the visions such hymns will impart.

Phillip A. Ellis

13

7/28/2019 Melaleuca 049


Five-Day Test

Old men grow older,

wilt in front of pedestal fans,

wispy fringes waving at each pass.

Tea cups sit empty on saucers,floral patterns faded where wrinkled lips

have kissed.

The cricket is on the wireless,

a half-hearted appeal –

Not out.

Jonathan Hadwen

14

7/28/2019 Melaleuca 049


I Have Not Been Sleeping

The night holds me open,

drips in its secrets,

each a coin of sound

clattering on the wooden floor.

It needs me, I know,

as a witness.

From the window it pleads,

Stay Awake.

I am afraid

of what you might dream.

Jonathan Hadwen

15

7/28/2019 Melaleuca 049


I read so much poetry that day,

book after book.

There was stillness in me, an emptiness,

like the teacup

waiting to be filled.

Jonathan Hadwen

16

7/28/2019 Melaleuca 049


Mulling over Mafeking

Mafeking is a retired goldfield of The Grampians, Victoria. At its peak, it was a bustling tent city of

10,000 miners.

The sedges and the bracken ferns are marching up the hill;

below, the scene at Spion Kopf and Ladysmith is still.They shoulder arms to stringybarks and blackwoods in their hosts

and bow in silent homage to a thousand miners’ ghosts.

Down gullies deep, nine thousand more are working at their claims –

the Brownings, Carrs and Kellys, in a culture-pot of names.

That spectre with a shovel and his mate with swirling pan,

may hail from Cork in Ireland, or be German, Swede or Ghan.

A bugler sounding reveille draws miners from their beds

and commerce cranks through Mafeking in slab-hut stores and sheds.

A city stitched from canvas twinkles brightly after tea,while valleys ring in chorus of the male-voice harmony.

"No Orients! No Women!" But their ruling shall relax;

they’ll save their spleen for governments that over-rule and tax.

A family is coming, one asleep on father’s neck;

her siblings four to seven years are old enough to trek.

The winter rains and horses hooves make gluepots of the roads

and wagon wheels are sinking fast beneath their precious loads.

Then opportunist bullockies see hauling business thrive,

by sucking hapless owners out with teams of ‘four-wheel-drive’.

The children search for Australites that fell from outer space

and hone their skills of prospecting for colour in the trace.

They know the scrub’s surprises and it spills their childish laughs,

while careful feet avoid the mouths of miners’ blackened shafts.

A chilling front of several weeks is disinclined to go;

it numbs the toes of students as they cross the fields of snow.

The food’s consumed – now hunger parks in every miner’s tent,

as goodwill and camaraderie are gathered up and spent.

But hark! From Mason’s Paddock there’s an echoed, cheery cry;

a wagonload of vegetables has come to boost supply!

Then snatching up their polished picks, that mountain-tempered band

revisits hardship stoically, to wash the gold from sand.

Max Merckenschlager

Grenfell Henry Lawson Festival first (traditional verse) and statuette winning poem 2009.

Published in Lifemarks (Ginninderra Press, 2009)

17

7/28/2019 Melaleuca 049


Dream Girl

(A comment on internet dating)

Is she really out there,

Or only in my head?

Dare I believe that she could bring

My heart back from the dead?

The more I learn about her,

The more she seems to be

The one that I've been waiting for,

The one who's meant for me.

I only know that when she speaks

She scares me to the core.

She steals away my self-control,

And I love her all the more.

My head is in a tizzy,

My heart is in a fret.

I cry out for the loving arms

Of a girl I've never met.

Sam Orton

18

Documents

Melaleuca 049