Melaleuca

Number 48: June 2013 Table of Contents Phillip A. Ellis Phillip A. Ellis Jonathan Hadwen Jonathan Hadwen Jonathan Hadwen Max Merckenschlager Sam Orton Martin and the Hidden Birds Music, as From the Spheres Five-Day Test I Have Not Been Sleeping [I read so much poetry that day,] Mulling over Mafeking Dream Girl 3 13 14 15 16 17 18 Editor: Phillip A. Ellis

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 Works 2.5 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 phillip@phillipaellis.com 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.

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 say that 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

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 windows will 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 singing it 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 anything about 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

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 streets and 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

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, cats that 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

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 nowwhy 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, cursing and 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

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 streets that 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 world is 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 bellies in 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

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

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 bubble the 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

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 memories that 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 goes this 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

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 bringing a 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

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, sinned against 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

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

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

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

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; theyll save their spleen for governments that over-rule and tax. A family is coming, one asleep on fathers 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 scrubs 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 foods consumed now hunger parks in every miners tent, as goodwill and camaraderie are gathered up and spent. But hark! From Masons Paddock theres 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

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