The Hand of Novelty In A Natural Death
By 1943 his hand was never held, always wringing
as no gripped thing in lack of anyone to answer.
So he grimaced with them and clutched at armrests
with white knuckles making snow-capped peaks
above the Hindu Kush on that Aeroflot Flight
carrying O Mighty One to touch down in Teheran -
with his escort guards of just 27 fighter planes….
Stalin did not want death not ever…ever,
And on return to Moscow he never flew again.
Yet that hand could still sign death, violent
death more regular than his use of toilet paper.
What was a Politburo apparatchik here or gone?
or a Commintern Chekist come to full term?
That hand could waive lives at Beria or Malenkov,
his obedient killing dogs, so that Jewish artists
like Mikhoels were run down by Cheka trucks out
smashing down the launch-champagne of Russia street.
And then, the hand…prescribed his own doctors.
The Chekist, Yagoda, was of course, executed.
All Gorkyists! doctors dealt in death by course;
failure to cease it was capital crime against the hand.
The hand, clutching for the water bottle, for Pravda.
And the fingers like eyes imprinting the fact that his
Doctors had all been waived to torture in his prisons.
Even Vinogradov, his personal physician was
In irons when the unseen hand made its stroke.
And after that last Stroke, as he choked, he woke -
“It was a terrible glance, insane or…angry, full of
the fear of death…suddenly he lifted his left hand
as though he were pointing to something up above
and bringing down a curse on all. The gesture was
incomprehensible and full of menace.” So Svetlana
Stalin said. And Martin Amis* adds. “What was he
(Stalin) doing? He was groping for his power.”
Here's the dexterity plague, active force of the evil hand,
as us that go at wringing hands, like new troglodytes who seek
out crafty novelty. The Novelty? Unlike most all of Russia
violated, this was Stalin dying a natural death.
* Martin Amis - Koba The Dread
Monday, November 23, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
THE WIND FROM SOMEWHERE?
Or GOD'S FAN
This high wind
will skin trees inside out.
Its hand
will part the gum trees like a barber
Looking for
loose limb-lengths to throw down
It will pick
up one improvident white-anted oak tree
And toss it
down for rot, even the solid branches will
Go down
the border like bodies after territorial war.
Anything loose
will be rocked till it breaks away.
Everything weak
be pulled from its thin belief stem
All that is
on the loose will be spun off into chaff.
This will be
on a day after the equinox, or a day else.
Neither flood,
nor yet a fire, just an increasing inflatus
Just a winding
wind to take that afflatus out our sails.
Then leaves
of our books will take to the sky as fast
As autumn’s y
ellowed poplars, the popular text on
Each page
will turn over and over in unread ozone.
Till this wind
eats the atmosphere, and throws down
The wires
powerless outside of the melodramas like strings
of a lolly puppet
blowing in a Judy-punched world.
And when the Some
where wind has spintered, has gathered
Has blown
our heaps and heaps of rubbish and rubbished it.
The where-going
wind will stay a little while as a fan…
for a flame.
Or GOD'S FAN
This high wind
will skin trees inside out.
Its hand
will part the gum trees like a barber
Looking for
loose limb-lengths to throw down
It will pick
up one improvident white-anted oak tree
And toss it
down for rot, even the solid branches will
Go down
the border like bodies after territorial war.
Anything loose
will be rocked till it breaks away.
Everything weak
be pulled from its thin belief stem
All that is
on the loose will be spun off into chaff.
This will be
on a day after the equinox, or a day else.
Neither flood,
nor yet a fire, just an increasing inflatus
Just a winding
wind to take that afflatus out our sails.
Then leaves
of our books will take to the sky as fast
As autumn’s y
ellowed poplars, the popular text on
Each page
will turn over and over in unread ozone.
Till this wind
eats the atmosphere, and throws down
The wires
powerless outside of the melodramas like strings
of a lolly puppet
blowing in a Judy-punched world.
And when the Some
where wind has spintered, has gathered
Has blown
our heaps and heaps of rubbish and rubbished it.
The where-going
wind will stay a little while as a fan…
for a flame.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Pastoral After A Fifteen Year Marriage
I am the one in the window
Watching rain that doesn’t come down;
I'm the one in a landscape of sorrow
The bones grate toward the ground.
The light on the gumtrees falls sidelong
To colour paint off the leaftips in erase,
Only the water-wash grey in the clouds
Sticks to this palette, my face.
Seven kookaburra vice a garden fence
Sniping the vegie patch of last worms;
A grey feather falls as day fades, darkens
.... I lose in love taken to terms.
Time passes! but clover in flower's no pastime
Wind shakes the mulch leaves in squirm;
A flight of kookuburras down the evening
Is the last hurrah of the worm.
I am the one in a porthole window
Watching rain as it doesn’t descend;
I'm the one left in the sorrow
Where our sinking partnership ends.
Trentham, 1992
Wayne David Knoll
I am the one in the window
Watching rain that doesn’t come down;
I'm the one in a landscape of sorrow
The bones grate toward the ground.
The light on the gumtrees falls sidelong
To colour paint off the leaftips in erase,
Only the water-wash grey in the clouds
Sticks to this palette, my face.
Seven kookaburra vice a garden fence
Sniping the vegie patch of last worms;
A grey feather falls as day fades, darkens
.... I lose in love taken to terms.
Time passes! but clover in flower's no pastime
Wind shakes the mulch leaves in squirm;
A flight of kookuburras down the evening
Is the last hurrah of the worm.
I am the one in a porthole window
Watching rain as it doesn’t descend;
I'm the one left in the sorrow
Where our sinking partnership ends.
Trentham, 1992
Wayne David Knoll
Monday, October 26, 2009
Bunches of Moon
Multi-hooped plastic flower
igloos of Silvan
In the moonlight catch the
pearl rosebuds
Of the budding moons of
reflection created
In the mirror films of floristry
domes after dome
Where bunched flam flowers
in the polymers cram
Until bunched moon images stretch
and many times repeated
To make a harvest in rows on
rows of pearly moons
A marvel in a chance of beauty
lit trinkets
Ripe for the picked lunacy
of our plastic nights.
11 September 2009 W. D. Knoll
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Working For The Loss
Trying to make up the shortfall… from being
wrong, maybe, or small,
Who looks deep enough at the ontology
Of it all?
So look! As knowledge of belief in mystery
decreases
Belief in bureaucracy
Is increased!
As if data, as in the facts,
Stated awry
could replace that
old story.
But, as belief in the numinous
Deceases,
And, mankind must be his own buck-stop,
He panics…
Unable to cope, the increasing anxiety attack
is a bout…
A salvo of doubt x doubt, born in secret
as self doubt.
Wanting to get it just so so right, as if just
One more research,
As if just another increment of knowledge
could replace real church.
As if a Will to knowledge could answer for the loss,
the Government towers, towers…
and Canberra bureaucrats are made to work by such a boss,
for long, for longer hours.
© Wayne David Knoll - 12th January 2009
Sunday, March 11, 2007
The Fog of Freedom
(Incident in an Outer Suburban Park at Night Time)
A low fog of distorted sky
in the bush park after 3 AM
Fudges a streetlight shine
among re-growth gumtrees.
And the halo of the highway halogen
blurs its eyeless-coward-yellow
into the shadowed creek recesses
of remant bush-wetland rises,
where an unminded flotsam
of loose teenagers ramble
to the smoking of fat grass
about thin sixteens of years.
In a freedom of nights being
now taken out of bed,
Out of the fenced and gated
detachment of their lives,
As if no parent back in
the shrouded night’s shutness
In the damp-dreamed houses
of streets near or far, bothers
About them enough to
be getting up to asking after
Where they are or waiting up
to find how they are.
Huddled in the fog
along tarred bikepaths, like a shadow
Heidleberg school of scenes in these
after midnight landscapes.
With no camp, no clandestine fire
to circle as a centre,
no satisfactory or temporary hearth
to gather round.
Just a wandering darkness
picked out in red joint ends
As they knock marijuana shoulders
and elbows each.
Then a female, stranger -
an older teen or 21stC adult? -
Screams from the scrub, comes
falling to broken wings of knees,
a waif curling into a foetal ball
before them, frenzied, not breathing,
choking up in fog, coughing liberty
as if wanting some other, frothing
grief, wailing hoarse abuse, incapable
of focus on a conversation.
Her distress sows discord
like the inarticulance of a kicked fungus,
let loose in the night,
poisonous in its stray uprootedness.
With a gaggle of teenager help
she recoils into higher vegetation
And only with the arrival of
a quartet of police does her
banshee wail settle to curdle
in a sentence that they can hear
and understand:
‘My ex-boyfriend took my mobile phone!’
Said as if she’d found, and lost,
a key to one of those houses.
The female, quieted, eschews
the arrived medical ambulance,
Wanting only to go to a free friend,
begging someone's mobile to call for a lift,
but failing, she accepts a prisoner-like lift
up-back with the police.
The other squad faces the teens,
now perched suckpipe-free
and smokeless on the edge of a BBQ,
like daybirds liberated from night trees,
like daybeings freed of a darkness.
And freely commands them,
binding them like public parents:
‘Now Go Home! Go Home.’
Said with more passion and bother
than the ones at home.
26 August 2006 © Wayne David Knoll
Bayswater, Victoria
(Incident in an Outer Suburban Park at Night Time)
A low fog of distorted sky
in the bush park after 3 AM
Fudges a streetlight shine
among re-growth gumtrees.
And the halo of the highway halogen
blurs its eyeless-coward-yellow
into the shadowed creek recesses
of remant bush-wetland rises,
where an unminded flotsam
of loose teenagers ramble
to the smoking of fat grass
about thin sixteens of years.
In a freedom of nights being
now taken out of bed,
Out of the fenced and gated
detachment of their lives,
As if no parent back in
the shrouded night’s shutness
In the damp-dreamed houses
of streets near or far, bothers
About them enough to
be getting up to asking after
Where they are or waiting up
to find how they are.
Huddled in the fog
along tarred bikepaths, like a shadow
Heidleberg school of scenes in these
after midnight landscapes.
With no camp, no clandestine fire
to circle as a centre,
no satisfactory or temporary hearth
to gather round.
Just a wandering darkness
picked out in red joint ends
As they knock marijuana shoulders
and elbows each.
Then a female, stranger -
an older teen or 21stC adult? -
Screams from the scrub, comes
falling to broken wings of knees,
a waif curling into a foetal ball
before them, frenzied, not breathing,
choking up in fog, coughing liberty
as if wanting some other, frothing
grief, wailing hoarse abuse, incapable
of focus on a conversation.
Her distress sows discord
like the inarticulance of a kicked fungus,
let loose in the night,
poisonous in its stray uprootedness.
With a gaggle of teenager help
she recoils into higher vegetation
And only with the arrival of
a quartet of police does her
banshee wail settle to curdle
in a sentence that they can hear
and understand:
‘My ex-boyfriend took my mobile phone!’
Said as if she’d found, and lost,
a key to one of those houses.
The female, quieted, eschews
the arrived medical ambulance,
Wanting only to go to a free friend,
begging someone's mobile to call for a lift,
but failing, she accepts a prisoner-like lift
up-back with the police.
The other squad faces the teens,
now perched suckpipe-free
and smokeless on the edge of a BBQ,
like daybirds liberated from night trees,
like daybeings freed of a darkness.
And freely commands them,
binding them like public parents:
‘Now Go Home! Go Home.’
Said with more passion and bother
than the ones at home.
26 August 2006 © Wayne David Knoll
Bayswater, Victoria
Socially Secure Arithmetic
Official unemployment only shows
Itself as the viscious niggard, when
It thinks in you: you’re hostage!
As if, as your confidences are
Taken by all the paperwork:
All your Confidence goes.
Am I reduced to this? That
Question keeps begging, begging.
Worse: that b-word asks: Apt?
Yes, you had your transports!
But as your old vehicle goes
Off the road, you try… and fail.
Life becomes arithmetic: the
things you can’t do multiply,
and things you can subtract.
Unemployment only just shows
Itself economic rationalist, and then
It counts you! - a wedge statistic.
7th October 2006 © Wayne David Knoll
Official unemployment only shows
Itself as the viscious niggard, when
It thinks in you: you’re hostage!
As if, as your confidences are
Taken by all the paperwork:
All your Confidence goes.
Am I reduced to this? That
Question keeps begging, begging.
Worse: that b-word asks: Apt?
Yes, you had your transports!
But as your old vehicle goes
Off the road, you try… and fail.
Life becomes arithmetic: the
things you can’t do multiply,
and things you can subtract.
Unemployment only just shows
Itself economic rationalist, and then
It counts you! - a wedge statistic.
7th October 2006 © Wayne David Knoll
Friday, March 09, 2007
Being Left Behind
Being left
behind when
your loved ones fly away,
travelling to places you’d like to be
and in their company
each step you make afterwards
is useless,
remembering the finality as those wide doors
shut you
on the wrong side.
The duty free shops have no attraction then
and along the airless airport malls
you bounce on sweep-worn sheen,
an alien among greyer aliens.
The outrageous price of the monopoly-run
car park grinds your pocket in your teeth
and, as you yearn unrequited, not now
for the noble, but for any exit
through those bilaw-hoops of grey ups and downs
that rise nowhere, you loose all sense of direction,
and only happen across the way again
in regret by remembering true north
which was the way
the flight out went.
so as you approach the first lit
intersection, you can’t decide
which way you want to go
indecision cripples you, your
accelerator foot looses its strength,
you dawdle off into the left lane
paused between non-take-offs
in non-acceptance of this
spirit-grounding
Then, you realize
that a rapture has happened
and you weren’t in it
And that, for your departed,
the universe is much increased
while for you the dome has shrunk
the walls are closing in, the grey roof’s
come down
your evening is yawning open
your tomorrow is a pedestrian repetition
of the mundane again,
your steps are leaden with the dull
ache of regretting that one step
you did not take
and this is hell.
29 March 2006 © Wayne David Knoll
Being left
behind when
your loved ones fly away,
travelling to places you’d like to be
and in their company
each step you make afterwards
is useless,
remembering the finality as those wide doors
shut you
on the wrong side.
The duty free shops have no attraction then
and along the airless airport malls
you bounce on sweep-worn sheen,
an alien among greyer aliens.
The outrageous price of the monopoly-run
car park grinds your pocket in your teeth
and, as you yearn unrequited, not now
for the noble, but for any exit
through those bilaw-hoops of grey ups and downs
that rise nowhere, you loose all sense of direction,
and only happen across the way again
in regret by remembering true north
which was the way
the flight out went.
so as you approach the first lit
intersection, you can’t decide
which way you want to go
indecision cripples you, your
accelerator foot looses its strength,
you dawdle off into the left lane
paused between non-take-offs
in non-acceptance of this
spirit-grounding
Then, you realize
that a rapture has happened
and you weren’t in it
And that, for your departed,
the universe is much increased
while for you the dome has shrunk
the walls are closing in, the grey roof’s
come down
your evening is yawning open
your tomorrow is a pedestrian repetition
of the mundane again,
your steps are leaden with the dull
ache of regretting that one step
you did not take
and this is hell.
29 March 2006 © Wayne David Knoll
Apology To The Future
- for my grandson
I’m sorry, so sorry. I saw
our imp-selves lifted up
-and this selfish meanness
- as it was happening... I
thought there was too little ‘one’
could do about ‘it:’ -this loss of
our holy beauty of being, the failure
of our mere private integrity,
of being a united people. I saw
the last days of social belonging,
the last of public joint commitment.
I tried, tried so little. Did what
I thought I could. Risked little.
I see, now, I was too much a robot
of the problem, thinking in that ‘one’
demoralized math of the time, even
with my solo finger in the dyke
– slave to that head-born head count!
Why was I in conformity?
to that labelled cut of cloth?
to what really didn’t matter?
when I was raised to courage
biblical enough to know how
by an inspired one, with a just few,
hosts of enemy can be put to rout?
I know! I failed.
Failed to engender enough faith
to lead with the brave and right.
So I saw roads swell to this
bloated soul-snarl. Saw outdoor
villages empty for shopping centres
as internally-built as prisons.
I grieved, uselessly, as I heard
that germ of our traffic subdividing,
multiplying like an amplified virus.
I saw the land concreted down
and paved with developed intentions,
the creeks piped to a fascist music.
I saw education become graduation,
debate, ideas, in abdication; saw
people let the Masters in Business Rule
gladly, as if that was learning! Saw
flow charts become virtual rivers for
future drought; saw suburban universities
swelling with Orwellian sustainabilty
courses; saw Religion become a fertile
prosperity cult! and spirituality become
a party balloon. I watched as demon
fisherman of the souls dressed normally
as a businessman in its suit and tie.
I was raised in earth, seeking divinities,
but I let the mass common-low culture
overwhelm me, let this dense conformity
cower me, for shame! Curse this bought,
this shopped-for shame, my son,
my scion! Curse this comfort, this
skein of our satisfaction that is drunk
too merrily as it rots our souls.
Courage be on you to grow in truth
and stature and find anger in
my dust to fight this enemy occupation
of our lands and souls. And when
I die, lower me that day
in no cute Lawn Cemetery, but put
my flesh in a public box and declare
me a Missing Link, the Link
of the Devolution from devotion
to decadence, then preach a hot
sermon against mere seedy being,
mine or any other. Be inspired
as the Avenging Angel at the last.
Preach of the reality of Death and Dying,
of the saints who set example in brave lives
to a brave dying for the cause of truth - as
the seed for the germination of
the other world in this one, to sprout
the bravest words of transcendence
out of the garden of your soul.
31 May 2006- Jan 2007 © Wayne David Knoll
- for my grandson
I’m sorry, so sorry. I saw
our imp-selves lifted up
-and this selfish meanness
- as it was happening... I
thought there was too little ‘one’
could do about ‘it:’ -this loss of
our holy beauty of being, the failure
of our mere private integrity,
of being a united people. I saw
the last days of social belonging,
the last of public joint commitment.
I tried, tried so little. Did what
I thought I could. Risked little.
I see, now, I was too much a robot
of the problem, thinking in that ‘one’
demoralized math of the time, even
with my solo finger in the dyke
– slave to that head-born head count!
Why was I in conformity?
to that labelled cut of cloth?
to what really didn’t matter?
when I was raised to courage
biblical enough to know how
by an inspired one, with a just few,
hosts of enemy can be put to rout?
I know! I failed.
Failed to engender enough faith
to lead with the brave and right.
So I saw roads swell to this
bloated soul-snarl. Saw outdoor
villages empty for shopping centres
as internally-built as prisons.
I grieved, uselessly, as I heard
that germ of our traffic subdividing,
multiplying like an amplified virus.
I saw the land concreted down
and paved with developed intentions,
the creeks piped to a fascist music.
I saw education become graduation,
debate, ideas, in abdication; saw
people let the Masters in Business Rule
gladly, as if that was learning! Saw
flow charts become virtual rivers for
future drought; saw suburban universities
swelling with Orwellian sustainabilty
courses; saw Religion become a fertile
prosperity cult! and spirituality become
a party balloon. I watched as demon
fisherman of the souls dressed normally
as a businessman in its suit and tie.
I was raised in earth, seeking divinities,
but I let the mass common-low culture
overwhelm me, let this dense conformity
cower me, for shame! Curse this bought,
this shopped-for shame, my son,
my scion! Curse this comfort, this
skein of our satisfaction that is drunk
too merrily as it rots our souls.
Courage be on you to grow in truth
and stature and find anger in
my dust to fight this enemy occupation
of our lands and souls. And when
I die, lower me that day
in no cute Lawn Cemetery, but put
my flesh in a public box and declare
me a Missing Link, the Link
of the Devolution from devotion
to decadence, then preach a hot
sermon against mere seedy being,
mine or any other. Be inspired
as the Avenging Angel at the last.
Preach of the reality of Death and Dying,
of the saints who set example in brave lives
to a brave dying for the cause of truth - as
the seed for the germination of
the other world in this one, to sprout
the bravest words of transcendence
out of the garden of your soul.
31 May 2006- Jan 2007 © Wayne David Knoll
After School
(with a nod to Richard Jefferies for ‘After London’ 1882)
I go up the street
and the young people grouped
round mandolin and guitar are trying out
lyrics they have written
while waiting outside
a venue for scripture study
They have taken imprecious metal
from their body flaps like last
ablutions before their song
I ride on the bike paths
and the young people
having abandoned tags,
yell out their ideas as they
whitewash the overpasses,
abseiling off bridges on rope slings,
preparing to write intelligent creative slogans
like their ‘Something Beautiful is Going to Happen”
in witty readable graffiti
on the clean slate of this old concrete.
I get on trains
and the young people
nod hello to me, and
instead of cadging a cigarette
say, “Mister! Can I read you
my poem about Billobelary.”
While listening, I hear one of the girls,
not plumbing that telco-sewer to gossip, but
philosophizing on her mobile phone.
I go to the hall tuition room
and the young people
run out before I’m in, saying:
‘Tell us the Lydian story of ‘The Song of
the Unnamed Queen’ again
… with a puppy grin of excuse: “because
Melanie didn’t hear it.”
I visit the library
and the Young People
are poring over classical histories and sharing
classic incidents in juicy plums they have found:
Melanie from the Odyssey,
a farmboy from Hesiod,
young wits from Juvenal.
The Future of Youth… maybe,
in Iceland, Falkland, or Poland ?
or
when Secondary School in Australia
is abolished.
2 March 2006 © Wayne David Knoll
(with a nod to Richard Jefferies for ‘After London’ 1882)
I go up the street
and the young people grouped
round mandolin and guitar are trying out
lyrics they have written
while waiting outside
a venue for scripture study
They have taken imprecious metal
from their body flaps like last
ablutions before their song
I ride on the bike paths
and the young people
having abandoned tags,
yell out their ideas as they
whitewash the overpasses,
abseiling off bridges on rope slings,
preparing to write intelligent creative slogans
like their ‘Something Beautiful is Going to Happen”
in witty readable graffiti
on the clean slate of this old concrete.
I get on trains
and the young people
nod hello to me, and
instead of cadging a cigarette
say, “Mister! Can I read you
my poem about Billobelary.”
While listening, I hear one of the girls,
not plumbing that telco-sewer to gossip, but
philosophizing on her mobile phone.
I go to the hall tuition room
and the young people
run out before I’m in, saying:
‘Tell us the Lydian story of ‘The Song of
the Unnamed Queen’ again
… with a puppy grin of excuse: “because
Melanie didn’t hear it.”
I visit the library
and the Young People
are poring over classical histories and sharing
classic incidents in juicy plums they have found:
Melanie from the Odyssey,
a farmboy from Hesiod,
young wits from Juvenal.
The Future of Youth… maybe,
in Iceland, Falkland, or Poland ?
or
when Secondary School in Australia
is abolished.
2 March 2006 © Wayne David Knoll
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Media at The Big Black Hole
(for Kerry Packer versus Phillip Adams)
That Big Black Hole
of the Prince Of the Air
is limitlessly small.
In it, vision shrinks till
only the media, the shell of things
can be seen, just the transmitted pods
with the seed of life eaten up
before each could die
into its potency.
Where Phillip Adams
wears his black outside,
blackwashing the conceit
of his title win in the bout
with the whole;
his much ‘pitied friend’ Kerry Packer
was more brutally honest, for
Kerry loudly declaimed that what
he had was a big black
hole inside.
Adams then had the perspicuity
to called Packer a damaged man,
and, this was said in glib temerity
as if he wasn’t, as if we all aren’t.
The reason why Kerry Packer saw
nothing when he momentarily died
of that renal meltdown,
was - nothing changed.
He had seen nothing
beforehand, just as he saw
nothing when he came back.
When Kerry died his inner hole
didn’t die, it stayed with him.
He saw no heaven,
just as he did before.
He saw no hell
just as he did before.
What did he expect
coming from a black hole?
But he knew its sign years before,
for he lived in the hell of that black hole
- living on as the nothing yawned.
He only saw what he expected
from black hole to spreading black hole,
-the amorphous black and ravenous
gaping hole which only the yielded
up embrace of an upright self-dying
last post of a cross can fill.
Then, he, spoken for
closer to that Kingdom,
chose to die, and Kerry Packer
secretly went to his last
broadcast Boyer-lecturer’s Christ
whose relayed Peter
blessed him at the brink
of the small hole it took
to bury the unspeakable
earthly remains.
24 Feb 2006 © Wayne David Knoll
(for Kerry Packer versus Phillip Adams)
That Big Black Hole
of the Prince Of the Air
is limitlessly small.
In it, vision shrinks till
only the media, the shell of things
can be seen, just the transmitted pods
with the seed of life eaten up
before each could die
into its potency.
Where Phillip Adams
wears his black outside,
blackwashing the conceit
of his title win in the bout
with the whole;
his much ‘pitied friend’ Kerry Packer
was more brutally honest, for
Kerry loudly declaimed that what
he had was a big black
hole inside.
Adams then had the perspicuity
to called Packer a damaged man,
and, this was said in glib temerity
as if he wasn’t, as if we all aren’t.
The reason why Kerry Packer saw
nothing when he momentarily died
of that renal meltdown,
was - nothing changed.
He had seen nothing
beforehand, just as he saw
nothing when he came back.
When Kerry died his inner hole
didn’t die, it stayed with him.
He saw no heaven,
just as he did before.
He saw no hell
just as he did before.
What did he expect
coming from a black hole?
But he knew its sign years before,
for he lived in the hell of that black hole
- living on as the nothing yawned.
He only saw what he expected
from black hole to spreading black hole,
-the amorphous black and ravenous
gaping hole which only the yielded
up embrace of an upright self-dying
last post of a cross can fill.
Then, he, spoken for
closer to that Kingdom,
chose to die, and Kerry Packer
secretly went to his last
broadcast Boyer-lecturer’s Christ
whose relayed Peter
blessed him at the brink
of the small hole it took
to bury the unspeakable
earthly remains.
24 Feb 2006 © Wayne David Knoll
The Wood and Stone Petition
On the 2nd of June 1849, my great great great grandpa C. Erdmann Jäckel, a tischlermeister (cabinet maker-joiner) with 210 other settler of 'New Silesia' in the Barossa Valley, signed what is now called the ‘Wood and Stone Petition’ lobbying the South Australian Governor to take material from Crown land to build pioneer homes. Though Erdmann soon had to leave his trade, and learn to farm, his family fell into distress which saw the death of his wife, his children’s mother. When he re-migrated to the east of Melbourne in 1853, where he could practice his craft on town houses built with gold rush wealth, he did not trust to this mastery, but kept to a hard-won providential life, with a small farm, cow, vines, orchard and hives at Boundary Road: a freedom practice many of his descendants still practice, or remember.
With hands in flesh worn to touch, but no ready money,
with families in health to provide, but no ready homes,
with rich mentalities, with skilled hands to use, but no materials,
I, Erdmann Jäckel, with my compatriot New Silesians
of this Barossa Valley, on the North Gawler river, petitioned
the then Governor on the 2nd of June in 1849 in a plea
to obtain wood and stone from the wastes of the Crown.
Finally, the Governor’s reply came with a breach
in the prohibition, - as if this was permission:
‘You will be allowed to remove dead trees.’
Those dead hardwood Australian trees are hard near to
a Prussian blue Exit signature inked at last on the too-easy writ
of dense legislation; and me, a tischlermeister, able to turn
the finest wood into even finer interiors…in a time of bark
huts, free-stone cabins, of wattle and daub, of unceilinged,
newspapered walls! Interiors? What use was dead wood?
What use was I? I lasted few years, then took ship for Port Phillip.
So, the fine fancy of lace-wrought wood in Victorian
gold scrollwork on front verandahs of Melbourne,
or the timbering of Hawthorn-brick homes does not answer
as well as a table, a chair, a bench seat, nor a shed roof, but there
in the wilds of ‘The Nunawading’ my mortises and dovetails made
fine hives for honey, my joinery made a prize cow bail, a water barrel,
a wooden home with verandah post and beams for vines, and my coffin.
Now, 157 years after my day, I, Erdmann Jäckel, the Earthman-builder
whose rustic bones underscored and spokeshaved what has become
suburban-Melbourne’s rise, am not blind to you, who still have hands
of flesh, much compromised to a world of paper resourcefulness,
in a mortgage shuffle of paper skills, good at the too-easily printed paper…
I petition now for you (and for your freedom) to ask for wild wood and stone
against many a signed paper, to foil a death-pledge of documents
you hold in the bought-surround houses of your night.
Give a Grace for Wood and Stone! Gnadenfrei -free grace
always will be what matters most for a signature writ
in the all-weather building-blocks of cultured simplicity.
July 2005-Jan 2007 © Wayne David Knoll
On the 2nd of June 1849, my great great great grandpa C. Erdmann Jäckel, a tischlermeister (cabinet maker-joiner) with 210 other settler of 'New Silesia' in the Barossa Valley, signed what is now called the ‘Wood and Stone Petition’ lobbying the South Australian Governor to take material from Crown land to build pioneer homes. Though Erdmann soon had to leave his trade, and learn to farm, his family fell into distress which saw the death of his wife, his children’s mother. When he re-migrated to the east of Melbourne in 1853, where he could practice his craft on town houses built with gold rush wealth, he did not trust to this mastery, but kept to a hard-won providential life, with a small farm, cow, vines, orchard and hives at Boundary Road: a freedom practice many of his descendants still practice, or remember.
With hands in flesh worn to touch, but no ready money,
with families in health to provide, but no ready homes,
with rich mentalities, with skilled hands to use, but no materials,
I, Erdmann Jäckel, with my compatriot New Silesians
of this Barossa Valley, on the North Gawler river, petitioned
the then Governor on the 2nd of June in 1849 in a plea
to obtain wood and stone from the wastes of the Crown.
Finally, the Governor’s reply came with a breach
in the prohibition, - as if this was permission:
‘You will be allowed to remove dead trees.’
Those dead hardwood Australian trees are hard near to
a Prussian blue Exit signature inked at last on the too-easy writ
of dense legislation; and me, a tischlermeister, able to turn
the finest wood into even finer interiors…in a time of bark
huts, free-stone cabins, of wattle and daub, of unceilinged,
newspapered walls! Interiors? What use was dead wood?
What use was I? I lasted few years, then took ship for Port Phillip.
So, the fine fancy of lace-wrought wood in Victorian
gold scrollwork on front verandahs of Melbourne,
or the timbering of Hawthorn-brick homes does not answer
as well as a table, a chair, a bench seat, nor a shed roof, but there
in the wilds of ‘The Nunawading’ my mortises and dovetails made
fine hives for honey, my joinery made a prize cow bail, a water barrel,
a wooden home with verandah post and beams for vines, and my coffin.
Now, 157 years after my day, I, Erdmann Jäckel, the Earthman-builder
whose rustic bones underscored and spokeshaved what has become
suburban-Melbourne’s rise, am not blind to you, who still have hands
of flesh, much compromised to a world of paper resourcefulness,
in a mortgage shuffle of paper skills, good at the too-easily printed paper…
I petition now for you (and for your freedom) to ask for wild wood and stone
against many a signed paper, to foil a death-pledge of documents
you hold in the bought-surround houses of your night.
Give a Grace for Wood and Stone! Gnadenfrei -free grace
always will be what matters most for a signature writ
in the all-weather building-blocks of cultured simplicity.
July 2005-Jan 2007 © Wayne David Knoll
Getting an Obfuscation
Thought I was studying a diploma of education!
And bought the 2006 teaching textbooks.
Then gagged trying to read them.
And I am slightly literate! I returned them.
Not worth buying if they fail the readability test.
Yet, the pain is, I have to know them to pass.
Is this the self-styled educator’s ordeal,
the testing ground of strained intelligence,
where I pass if I fail?
Fail to reject: ‘Education outcomes’ where I would say: ‘learning.’
Fail to reject: ‘school achievement behaviour’ where you could say: ‘learning.’
Fail to reject: ‘experiential skill areas’ where you could say: ‘skill’
Fail to reject: ‘various indices of effective behaviour.’
where you could say: ‘learning’ or ‘skills.’
Is this the word-car’s crash - on education’s dingaring road,
The pile-up of dud and plastic language into a traffic jelly
A commuted stupidity A word-snarl that convinces willing idiots
to crumple up to abstracts as if to be seen in profundity…
Achievement becomes abstract riders on abstract nouns
in our mind’s death sentences, convoluted with crippling
injuries of syntax, in complex clauses
that would render us less significant, or stupid.
Call that an educative menu? Just mouthing the texts
I get the foretaste of retchings I don’t need to digest.
A sick empire’s tailors spin up
insubstantial clothes.
This time, not transparent, but
stupefying, obscuring…
The obfuscators? why do they do it? making
teachers for school with those long periods
of subservience to the institutionalization
of our obfuscation, being idiot conformisers
who turn freedom on the loom of confusions
into this conformity, this slave obscurity…
this ignoble, obfuscated slavishness to form,
a yet suave unintelligentsia.
I am a reader, an educator,
seeking education, and knowledge
of mankind in truth to stay sane, so I turn
back to books
as readable as Thucydides who wrote
in 408 BCE:
“as the result of these revolutions
there was a general deterioration
of character throughout the Greek world.
The simple way of looking at things,
.. so much the mark of noble nature,
was regarded as a ridiculous quality
and soon ceased to exist”
Now that book gets me a noble education
With the others I’m getting an obfuscation.
16 March 2006 © Wayne David Knoll
Australian Catholic University, Fitzroy, Victoria
Thought I was studying a diploma of education!
And bought the 2006 teaching textbooks.
Then gagged trying to read them.
And I am slightly literate! I returned them.
Not worth buying if they fail the readability test.
Yet, the pain is, I have to know them to pass.
Is this the self-styled educator’s ordeal,
the testing ground of strained intelligence,
where I pass if I fail?
Fail to reject: ‘Education outcomes’ where I would say: ‘learning.’
Fail to reject: ‘school achievement behaviour’ where you could say: ‘learning.’
Fail to reject: ‘experiential skill areas’ where you could say: ‘skill’
Fail to reject: ‘various indices of effective behaviour.’
where you could say: ‘learning’ or ‘skills.’
Is this the word-car’s crash - on education’s dingaring road,
The pile-up of dud and plastic language into a traffic jelly
A commuted stupidity A word-snarl that convinces willing idiots
to crumple up to abstracts as if to be seen in profundity…
Achievement becomes abstract riders on abstract nouns
in our mind’s death sentences, convoluted with crippling
injuries of syntax, in complex clauses
that would render us less significant, or stupid.
Call that an educative menu? Just mouthing the texts
I get the foretaste of retchings I don’t need to digest.
A sick empire’s tailors spin up
insubstantial clothes.
This time, not transparent, but
stupefying, obscuring…
The obfuscators? why do they do it? making
teachers for school with those long periods
of subservience to the institutionalization
of our obfuscation, being idiot conformisers
who turn freedom on the loom of confusions
into this conformity, this slave obscurity…
this ignoble, obfuscated slavishness to form,
a yet suave unintelligentsia.
I am a reader, an educator,
seeking education, and knowledge
of mankind in truth to stay sane, so I turn
back to books
as readable as Thucydides who wrote
in 408 BCE:
“as the result of these revolutions
there was a general deterioration
of character throughout the Greek world.
The simple way of looking at things,
.. so much the mark of noble nature,
was regarded as a ridiculous quality
and soon ceased to exist”
Now that book gets me a noble education
With the others I’m getting an obfuscation.
16 March 2006 © Wayne David Knoll
Australian Catholic University, Fitzroy, Victoria
On Anxiety Attacks
[ How am I - How are you? ]
How are you?
I am not very well
oh - what is it?
it is the emotions
oh
it might be a nervous breakdown
oh
it could be anxiety attacks
oh - what happens?
emotions drown me
oh - what is it like?
feeling tidalwaves over me
oh - what feeling?
- being this cracked
- this poor, this broken
- grief at the good which died
- fear of rejection again
- love for my nativity land
(a country made nouveau)
- grief at our lost assurances
- anger at the neglect
- pining to be loved
- grief for how we are
- homesick for dinkums
- despair in our cowardly leaders
- disappointment at pretence
- afraid of experts and statistics,
- chronic love of small beauty,
- of hopes unrealised
- of vision undone
- impatience for faith to come
- too much thinking - I cannot do
- too much feeling - I cannot shake
- my unrequited soul
oh - what effect does it have?
it cripples,
oh
it knocks me for six
oh
washes me out to sea
oh
or else it opens a chasm beneath me
oh
and inflates my fear of heights
oh
and I frieze as if in vertigo
oh - are you okay then?
Since I am not obeying it:
not bad, no.
30 August 1999 © Wayne David Knoll
[ How am I - How are you? ]
How are you?
I am not very well
oh - what is it?
it is the emotions
oh
it might be a nervous breakdown
oh
it could be anxiety attacks
oh - what happens?
emotions drown me
oh - what is it like?
feeling tidalwaves over me
oh - what feeling?
- being this cracked
- this poor, this broken
- grief at the good which died
- fear of rejection again
- love for my nativity land
(a country made nouveau)
- grief at our lost assurances
- anger at the neglect
- pining to be loved
- grief for how we are
- homesick for dinkums
- despair in our cowardly leaders
- disappointment at pretence
- afraid of experts and statistics,
- chronic love of small beauty,
- of hopes unrealised
- of vision undone
- impatience for faith to come
- too much thinking - I cannot do
- too much feeling - I cannot shake
- my unrequited soul
oh - what effect does it have?
it cripples,
oh
it knocks me for six
oh
washes me out to sea
oh
or else it opens a chasm beneath me
oh
and inflates my fear of heights
oh
and I frieze as if in vertigo
oh - are you okay then?
Since I am not obeying it:
not bad, no.
30 August 1999 © Wayne David Knoll
Friday, March 02, 2007
1. Fillbaskets
- circa 1956
['Northumberland Fillbasket' raspberries were one of two local native-born Wandin and well-known varieties which my great-great-great grandfather and pioneer, Edward Hunter, bred and grew in his wholesale nursery, till they multiplied across the Yarra districts; -the other sort were called 'Hunter's Perfection.' Hunter took up land there in 1866 and settled at Wandin Yallock from Heidelberg in the early 1870s.]
Before our biggened dam was bayed into the bottom flat
with excavations made by my mother's brother's dozers,
there used to be a patch of raspberries, in close to the creek,
[it is all flooded now, the memory is sprinkler-dripping leaves],
generation-tall bushes which grew in rows close-spaced as a careful pedigree
which the horse and tiller could fit, to exactly cultivate;
and in my first toddle of waking, going years of hot summer in
familiar bounty, prized at picking time, into shade for the cool,
I went among ends, invents of ingenious rows, being in, not doubting,
a scion basking in a born inheritance of life and nurture
as if all creation had been improved and named for me
-life which had been decided, bred and nurtured until then
-from Scottish border shires to the fertile Yarra Billanook-
where my own cornucopia basket could fill, warp and weft
like muses strands, for even these very raspberries were
a bloodline inheritance, first cultivated by my own ancestor;
-plant-breeder, and rootstock of faith in the parish,
-pioneer immigrant going native to Wandin Yallock red-lands
who planted and bred for his future native sons;
-Methodist elder, first Shire man, public Christian:
Ted Hunter, -in Australian nativity, my grandsire times three.
Fillbasket! Like an outlasting providence;
this was one nameable strand linking back,
a milieu of cultive nativity outside my blood:
I heard the adults say the ancient name
like a familiar litany of life in practice:
"We're picking the Fillbaskets."
" We got a good pick off the Fillbaskets."
" The Fillbaskets are still bearing well!"
like songs woven in the air
voicing this place as my place;
as if raspberry plants were an attendant angel host
giving the present of circumstances
in joyful nativity.
* * *
7 Dec 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
First Published in ‘Studio: a Journal of Christians Writing Albury NSW 1997
- circa 1956
['Northumberland Fillbasket' raspberries were one of two local native-born Wandin and well-known varieties which my great-great-great grandfather and pioneer, Edward Hunter, bred and grew in his wholesale nursery, till they multiplied across the Yarra districts; -the other sort were called 'Hunter's Perfection.' Hunter took up land there in 1866 and settled at Wandin Yallock from Heidelberg in the early 1870s.]
Before our biggened dam was bayed into the bottom flat
with excavations made by my mother's brother's dozers,
there used to be a patch of raspberries, in close to the creek,
[it is all flooded now, the memory is sprinkler-dripping leaves],
generation-tall bushes which grew in rows close-spaced as a careful pedigree
which the horse and tiller could fit, to exactly cultivate;
and in my first toddle of waking, going years of hot summer in
familiar bounty, prized at picking time, into shade for the cool,
I went among ends, invents of ingenious rows, being in, not doubting,
a scion basking in a born inheritance of life and nurture
as if all creation had been improved and named for me
-life which had been decided, bred and nurtured until then
-from Scottish border shires to the fertile Yarra Billanook-
where my own cornucopia basket could fill, warp and weft
like muses strands, for even these very raspberries were
a bloodline inheritance, first cultivated by my own ancestor;
-plant-breeder, and rootstock of faith in the parish,
-pioneer immigrant going native to Wandin Yallock red-lands
who planted and bred for his future native sons;
-Methodist elder, first Shire man, public Christian:
Ted Hunter, -in Australian nativity, my grandsire times three.
Fillbasket! Like an outlasting providence;
this was one nameable strand linking back,
a milieu of cultive nativity outside my blood:
I heard the adults say the ancient name
like a familiar litany of life in practice:
"We're picking the Fillbaskets."
" We got a good pick off the Fillbaskets."
" The Fillbaskets are still bearing well!"
like songs woven in the air
voicing this place as my place;
as if raspberry plants were an attendant angel host
giving the present of circumstances
in joyful nativity.
* * *
7 Dec 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
First Published in ‘Studio: a Journal of Christians Writing Albury NSW 1997
2. PermaCultural Hunter
- circa 1996
In Memory of my great-great-great grandfather, Edward Hunter -Born: 1817 Longbenton, Northumberland, England Departed 1852 on 'The Emigrant' from Sunderland to Melbourne, Died: 1895 Wandin Yallock, Victoria, Australia.
In Yarra Valley Lilydale,
outmoded in late decades,
from being
the horticultural
people's country town,
Limil shire village,
Melbourne lime supply depot;
to being sub-urban
a vegetating rank-growth
of suppurated suburbs!
Edward Hunter,
My horticultural forbear;
-like a plant
long-loaded after bearing
lies in wait
in his century-outlasted grave;
for,
though now unsung,
his Lillydale can still be read
in the cemetery,
speaking good
as he once spoke
in Council
counsel engraved
deep in his tombstone:
" There is no death!
What seems so is transition;
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life Elysian
whose portal we call death. "
7 Dec 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
First Published in ‘Studio: a Journal of Christians Writing Albury NSW 1997
- circa 1996
In Memory of my great-great-great grandfather, Edward Hunter -Born: 1817 Longbenton, Northumberland, England Departed 1852 on 'The Emigrant' from Sunderland to Melbourne, Died: 1895 Wandin Yallock, Victoria, Australia.
In Yarra Valley Lilydale,
outmoded in late decades,
from being
the horticultural
people's country town,
Limil shire village,
Melbourne lime supply depot;
to being sub-urban
a vegetating rank-growth
of suppurated suburbs!
Edward Hunter,
My horticultural forbear;
-like a plant
long-loaded after bearing
lies in wait
in his century-outlasted grave;
for,
though now unsung,
his Lillydale can still be read
in the cemetery,
speaking good
as he once spoke
in Council
counsel engraved
deep in his tombstone:
" There is no death!
What seems so is transition;
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life Elysian
whose portal we call death. "
7 Dec 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
First Published in ‘Studio: a Journal of Christians Writing Albury NSW 1997
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Posterity is the Invention that Surpasses
or (Cold War of the Fallen Tombs)
“Unlike these tombs, which were real ones containing the bodies of the dead, all the other funeral mounds which are to be seen at Plataea were, so far as my information goes, erected merely for show: they are empty, and were put up to impress posterity by the various states who were ashamed of having taken no part in the battle. There is one tomb there, bearing the name of the Aeginetan interests which I am told was constructed at their request ten years after the battle, by Cleades, the son of Atodicus…”
Herodotus of Halicarnassus in ‘The Histories’ c. 300 BC
1.
I am Cleades, the son of Atodicus
the Australian
who made a pile at Gallipoli
- or was it further down the peninsula?
those foreign places are all Greek to me.
Who cares if it was ten years or a hundred after?
but, a tumulus, a road, a barrow, a great big mound
was needed for public recognition, as they say.
Posterity is the invention that surpasses
- at least at present.
Our Victorian Mornington Peninsula might do
- for a small retainer,
it’s circumstance is splendid. It looks
like Gallipoli from both the sea and air,
and there, a reconstructed re-enactment
of pomp and ceremony
can take place. And, on the Westernport side,
on flatter lands at Hastings, or Tooradin,
we can have Plataea, Boeotia,
some rural theme park.
2.
I am Albert Edward Henderson,
my scribe’s first cousin twice removed,
born Mildura 1898, absconded from law
school where I was sent to finishing
in Sydney, to be a number in the first A.I.F.
- aka Albert Edwards -
against first parent knowledge;
draining through Suez in a mob
shipped like schoolboys on the free excursion,
then steaming up the blue-skied Aegean
as if that was a sight under darkness,
going ashore to this Thracian hollow
where my eighteen-year old legal bones still
fool with consequentiality without a trace.
I have my whited cross! Seeing my mother,
unhorsed from her equestrian champions,
fey, mad with grief, my Mayor-father
lettering his failure to find my bones
cutting writ in the granite stone
of new public parks, a crux
of clanking flagpoles by duck-ponds
of river Murray pump-water!
as if my prospects deserted there
to keep annually appearing in a Mallee-Park air
with the pungent rosemary in herbal
conventions of quack respect.
3.
I am my scribe’s grandfather,
Horace James Jackel, who refused
my name to Billy Hughes P.M. when
he came slapping the sword of his army
for our crowd to encore.
I did not register. I did not enlist.
I was not conscripted. I did not go.
I went instead to public shame, to white
feathers, to prison and its shaming afterlife
in a curtailed ordained ministry.
A gospel conscience was my commander,
and then, I could not countenance killing my
distant unknown un-Australian-German cousins.
I learnt the other meaning of active service.
I had sixty eight years labour
for the kingdom of peace I believed in,
primary producer of Spirit wisdom,
of wide brimmed shelter,
in open home and family.
And, I still have this cheek
turned out to you for shame
from where my bones lie
collapsed in Nangana Cemetery,
in the ignominy of heroic reticence.
4.
I am Posterity: judge me not, judge me;
as our Australian War Memorials,
rising years after the battles,
like development project tombs in new Boeotia,
which, by clubbing to the memory
of the crowd-joiners, are rebuilt
as in honour grandly…
to catch both those ongoing views
- in the daily sacrifice of pilgrims
- entering the compromise
of that public selling -
at the crossroads, and also,
the rising path of the sun, with
a masonry of traps and snares,
as the endangered spirit creature
is turned to profit bred and tamed.
11 November 2005 © Wayne David Knoll
or (Cold War of the Fallen Tombs)
“Unlike these tombs, which were real ones containing the bodies of the dead, all the other funeral mounds which are to be seen at Plataea were, so far as my information goes, erected merely for show: they are empty, and were put up to impress posterity by the various states who were ashamed of having taken no part in the battle. There is one tomb there, bearing the name of the Aeginetan interests which I am told was constructed at their request ten years after the battle, by Cleades, the son of Atodicus…”
Herodotus of Halicarnassus in ‘The Histories’ c. 300 BC
1.
I am Cleades, the son of Atodicus
the Australian
who made a pile at Gallipoli
- or was it further down the peninsula?
those foreign places are all Greek to me.
Who cares if it was ten years or a hundred after?
but, a tumulus, a road, a barrow, a great big mound
was needed for public recognition, as they say.
Posterity is the invention that surpasses
- at least at present.
Our Victorian Mornington Peninsula might do
- for a small retainer,
it’s circumstance is splendid. It looks
like Gallipoli from both the sea and air,
and there, a reconstructed re-enactment
of pomp and ceremony
can take place. And, on the Westernport side,
on flatter lands at Hastings, or Tooradin,
we can have Plataea, Boeotia,
some rural theme park.
2.
I am Albert Edward Henderson,
my scribe’s first cousin twice removed,
born Mildura 1898, absconded from law
school where I was sent to finishing
in Sydney, to be a number in the first A.I.F.
- aka Albert Edwards -
against first parent knowledge;
draining through Suez in a mob
shipped like schoolboys on the free excursion,
then steaming up the blue-skied Aegean
as if that was a sight under darkness,
going ashore to this Thracian hollow
where my eighteen-year old legal bones still
fool with consequentiality without a trace.
I have my whited cross! Seeing my mother,
unhorsed from her equestrian champions,
fey, mad with grief, my Mayor-father
lettering his failure to find my bones
cutting writ in the granite stone
of new public parks, a crux
of clanking flagpoles by duck-ponds
of river Murray pump-water!
as if my prospects deserted there
to keep annually appearing in a Mallee-Park air
with the pungent rosemary in herbal
conventions of quack respect.
3.
I am my scribe’s grandfather,
Horace James Jackel, who refused
my name to Billy Hughes P.M. when
he came slapping the sword of his army
for our crowd to encore.
I did not register. I did not enlist.
I was not conscripted. I did not go.
I went instead to public shame, to white
feathers, to prison and its shaming afterlife
in a curtailed ordained ministry.
A gospel conscience was my commander,
and then, I could not countenance killing my
distant unknown un-Australian-German cousins.
I learnt the other meaning of active service.
I had sixty eight years labour
for the kingdom of peace I believed in,
primary producer of Spirit wisdom,
of wide brimmed shelter,
in open home and family.
And, I still have this cheek
turned out to you for shame
from where my bones lie
collapsed in Nangana Cemetery,
in the ignominy of heroic reticence.
4.
I am Posterity: judge me not, judge me;
as our Australian War Memorials,
rising years after the battles,
like development project tombs in new Boeotia,
which, by clubbing to the memory
of the crowd-joiners, are rebuilt
as in honour grandly…
to catch both those ongoing views
- in the daily sacrifice of pilgrims
- entering the compromise
of that public selling -
at the crossroads, and also,
the rising path of the sun, with
a masonry of traps and snares,
as the endangered spirit creature
is turned to profit bred and tamed.
11 November 2005 © Wayne David Knoll
The Two Tables
- Based on ‘The Histories’ - Herodotus of Halicarnassus
Herodotus wrote: ‘It is said that Xerxes on his retreat from Greece left his tent with Mardonius. When Pausanias saw it, with its embroidered hangings and gorgeous decorations in silver and gold, he summoned Mardonius’ bakers and cooks and told them to prepare a meal of the same sort as they were accustomed to prepare for their former master. The order was obeyed; and when Pausanias saw gold and silver couches all beautifully draped, and gold and silver tables, and everything prepared for the feast with great magnificence, he could hardly believe his eyes for the good things set before him, and just for a joke, ordered his own servants to get ready an ordinary Spartan dinner. The difference between the two meals was indeed remarkable, and when both were ready, Pausanias laughed and sent for the Greek commanding officers. When they arrived, he invited them to take a look at the two tables, saying, “Gentlemen, I asked you here in order to show you the folly of the Persians, who, living in this style, came to Greece to rob us of our poverty.”
After the far-flung freedom battle had ended,
and that ‘invincible’ World Power’s tents were taken
Pausanius, captain of us The Empire called outlandish,
could hardly believe a sight new to our rustic vision:
seeing the embroidered tent that Xerxes left his chief
of staff [the now dead Mardonius] and his army
bureaucrats - that bevy of badge-rewarded subalterns,
with its imported brocades, its gorgeous decorations,
its high table of silver bowls, platters, its cups of gold.
But Pausanias, of Spartan raising, kept his nous
from cheap greed or avarice, even so, he ordered
his now servant once-Persian bakers and cooks
to reset the tables and fill them with prepared
dishes as if for a victory banquet familiar
deemed customary for their former masters;
with Pausanias looking on in private amusement
at the opulent feast of Oriental foods, decanters of red
Shiraz, the piled up spread of draped magnificence.
Then he ordered the helots, his own servants, to
put up a trestle for an ordinary Spartan meal, aside
from the captured Empire’s spread magnificence.
Then, in casual good humour, he freely invited in us
victorious Western commanders, to lead us salivating
like bazaar dogs around that plush Eastern marquee,
vaster now the difference was displayed in two tables.
‘Welcome! Come in Gentlemen. Walk with me
around these two tables. Look long before you taste
the rewards. Only, after pause for consideration
you may choose between: “The subaltern or the free.”
This was the joke of Pausanias, Commander of Spartans,
then saying: “I asked you here in order to show you
the folly of the Persians, who, living at tables in
this style, invaded Greece to rob us of our poverty.”
At the time we enjoyed the joke. What would you do?
We laughed. Two tables beckoned and we were
free to take. And then we ate, we whooped it up!
We freely took all spoils - from both the big table
and small, as victors by tradition take. But now, this
nausea. Undigested, what we swallowed goes gastric
in our souls, impossible to vomit, a cureless bug,
like coward feeling, gutting at the bowel, all while
robed in the win-win of this freedom’s tablecloths.
November 2005 © Wayne Deavid Knoll
- Based on ‘The Histories’ - Herodotus of Halicarnassus
Herodotus wrote: ‘It is said that Xerxes on his retreat from Greece left his tent with Mardonius. When Pausanias saw it, with its embroidered hangings and gorgeous decorations in silver and gold, he summoned Mardonius’ bakers and cooks and told them to prepare a meal of the same sort as they were accustomed to prepare for their former master. The order was obeyed; and when Pausanias saw gold and silver couches all beautifully draped, and gold and silver tables, and everything prepared for the feast with great magnificence, he could hardly believe his eyes for the good things set before him, and just for a joke, ordered his own servants to get ready an ordinary Spartan dinner. The difference between the two meals was indeed remarkable, and when both were ready, Pausanias laughed and sent for the Greek commanding officers. When they arrived, he invited them to take a look at the two tables, saying, “Gentlemen, I asked you here in order to show you the folly of the Persians, who, living in this style, came to Greece to rob us of our poverty.”
After the far-flung freedom battle had ended,
and that ‘invincible’ World Power’s tents were taken
Pausanius, captain of us The Empire called outlandish,
could hardly believe a sight new to our rustic vision:
seeing the embroidered tent that Xerxes left his chief
of staff [the now dead Mardonius] and his army
bureaucrats - that bevy of badge-rewarded subalterns,
with its imported brocades, its gorgeous decorations,
its high table of silver bowls, platters, its cups of gold.
But Pausanias, of Spartan raising, kept his nous
from cheap greed or avarice, even so, he ordered
his now servant once-Persian bakers and cooks
to reset the tables and fill them with prepared
dishes as if for a victory banquet familiar
deemed customary for their former masters;
with Pausanias looking on in private amusement
at the opulent feast of Oriental foods, decanters of red
Shiraz, the piled up spread of draped magnificence.
Then he ordered the helots, his own servants, to
put up a trestle for an ordinary Spartan meal, aside
from the captured Empire’s spread magnificence.
Then, in casual good humour, he freely invited in us
victorious Western commanders, to lead us salivating
like bazaar dogs around that plush Eastern marquee,
vaster now the difference was displayed in two tables.
‘Welcome! Come in Gentlemen. Walk with me
around these two tables. Look long before you taste
the rewards. Only, after pause for consideration
you may choose between: “The subaltern or the free.”
This was the joke of Pausanias, Commander of Spartans,
then saying: “I asked you here in order to show you
the folly of the Persians, who, living at tables in
this style, invaded Greece to rob us of our poverty.”
At the time we enjoyed the joke. What would you do?
We laughed. Two tables beckoned and we were
free to take. And then we ate, we whooped it up!
We freely took all spoils - from both the big table
and small, as victors by tradition take. But now, this
nausea. Undigested, what we swallowed goes gastric
in our souls, impossible to vomit, a cureless bug,
like coward feeling, gutting at the bowel, all while
robed in the win-win of this freedom’s tablecloths.
November 2005 © Wayne Deavid Knoll
Time of The Memory Man
In memory of Joseph Michael Mahony 1929-2005
Written and given to Joe in 2001 after finding we shared a common birthplace at The Airlie Hospital, Darebin Creek, Ivanhoe, Victoria
Joseph Mahony: man of the faithful
with lady magnificat,
Loving history and lineage,
- in that knowing kings!
Recites the names, dates, as if purring
thanks like a cat,
For once upon all times where
a noble heart sings.
Tell us truths and of justice, Joe,
for the good and no less,
Tell us of pain and of losses,
that ought to be grieved;
But give us pause for mercy, -
turn their ‘no’ into ‘yes’,
Tell us, fighting, of great battles fought
for a world that believed.
A world rejected you as mad, Joe
Tsskd you bad as an alcoholic;
In a crazy sin you lived, that you knew
Being of courage they denied;
Knowing a memorable belief makes us
Truly Christ’s and broad catholic
With a quixotic truth you clutched to,
Though a whole world lied
Never let us forget the soul-warriors,
the women of courage,
Don’t let us forget Christ's martyrs,
the men of high degree;
Never let us forget the zeitgeist
imprisoning our age,
Don’t ever let us forget
how we get spiritually free.
Tell us of champions, Joe, list Popes, Kings
and Melbourne Cup winners,
Tell us the human toll in all times,
in prayers of the faithful;
Be our reminder, give benchmarks of saints
and changeable sinners,
Keep litany of memory
till we rejoice to the full.
Praising Cat, like the poet, Chris Smart,
with his cat ‘Jeoffry’
Penning your fellow-souls into glory,
- inconsiderably odd;
Enlight! to the good conversation found,
in a world most unconversant…
Shuffling, shambolic, in the risk-balance
of the Living God.
"Never be surprised by Death."
you said - like my grandfather!
You knew old truths that our world
Fears, and makes taboo;
Righteous men perish, and few
give a damn. Being rather
To keen not to give one's mortality
the thought you had come to.
Lets charge that ghost cavalcade
off its oppression-beast,
Let’s charge the glasses, Joe,
let’s drink the glad wine;
Cheers to Christ’s miracle!
our well-vintaged Cana feast!
Cheers to that final release
from the shackles of time!
25 April 2001 © Wayne David Knoll
Corpus Christi Community, Greenvale,
In memory of Joseph Michael Mahony 1929-2005
Written and given to Joe in 2001 after finding we shared a common birthplace at The Airlie Hospital, Darebin Creek, Ivanhoe, Victoria
Joseph Mahony: man of the faithful
with lady magnificat,
Loving history and lineage,
- in that knowing kings!
Recites the names, dates, as if purring
thanks like a cat,
For once upon all times where
a noble heart sings.
Tell us truths and of justice, Joe,
for the good and no less,
Tell us of pain and of losses,
that ought to be grieved;
But give us pause for mercy, -
turn their ‘no’ into ‘yes’,
Tell us, fighting, of great battles fought
for a world that believed.
A world rejected you as mad, Joe
Tsskd you bad as an alcoholic;
In a crazy sin you lived, that you knew
Being of courage they denied;
Knowing a memorable belief makes us
Truly Christ’s and broad catholic
With a quixotic truth you clutched to,
Though a whole world lied
Never let us forget the soul-warriors,
the women of courage,
Don’t let us forget Christ's martyrs,
the men of high degree;
Never let us forget the zeitgeist
imprisoning our age,
Don’t ever let us forget
how we get spiritually free.
Tell us of champions, Joe, list Popes, Kings
and Melbourne Cup winners,
Tell us the human toll in all times,
in prayers of the faithful;
Be our reminder, give benchmarks of saints
and changeable sinners,
Keep litany of memory
till we rejoice to the full.
Praising Cat, like the poet, Chris Smart,
with his cat ‘Jeoffry’
Penning your fellow-souls into glory,
- inconsiderably odd;
Enlight! to the good conversation found,
in a world most unconversant…
Shuffling, shambolic, in the risk-balance
of the Living God.
"Never be surprised by Death."
you said - like my grandfather!
You knew old truths that our world
Fears, and makes taboo;
Righteous men perish, and few
give a damn. Being rather
To keen not to give one's mortality
the thought you had come to.
Lets charge that ghost cavalcade
off its oppression-beast,
Let’s charge the glasses, Joe,
let’s drink the glad wine;
Cheers to Christ’s miracle!
our well-vintaged Cana feast!
Cheers to that final release
from the shackles of time!
25 April 2001 © Wayne David Knoll
Corpus Christi Community, Greenvale,
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