Eclogues

I

The first ten steps from the house to the shed, I breaktwo or three promises the night has strung                                     like spiders' webs across my path.The morning is sprung with secretsthe night's been spinning all night and now they're trapping daylightbetween the oak and the mendicant poplars and snapping

Ii

Before me on the broken trail to my desk. In the cowshedthe spider hangs on the cross of herself                                     above the first stall door,where, these seven days, she's been dying,and I bank a fire and shoo the children when they follow me inand I sit to work. Winter's come, and down on the river the kangaroos

Iii

Know it. I winter here all day, the poplars, wasted saints, laying on theirhands,and nine hours on there's a shoal of cloud in a cold sky                                     and a blue moon loose in it like a man overboard.Why is it so hard to keep a fire burningall day? You turn your back and it's gone outsomewhere, and yet you sit here still, every thought broken,                                               your feet cold in your boots.

Iv

Two nights later the moon rises nicotine-stained and peaceableinto the fingers of the silver trees,                                     and the floodplain is a smoke-filled basement.Out of the blue sprawling mist the plover's mad call:why will a river not stay in the ground?Out on the deck, I draw down deep on the evening and turn and walk

V

Its balm inside and search again briefly for the frequency of family lifeand I find it in the bath, my girl                                     and our three children, sleek as seals,and in that moment a truck passes on the roadand snaps the powerline from the eaves. The house shudders and we fallback in time to candles and stories by heart and reading the news from memory.

Vi

The earth, it seems, has caught a fever, and where will she lieto rest? When the men come                                     and plug us back in, I believe I hear hergroan. How will she beginto forgive us, or is that what she's been doing all along?In the night the mist rolls away, and at dawn there's a frost over everything.

Vii

You'd call it a blessing if you hadn't been woken four timesby minor deities, pyjamaed like children                                     and frantic in the dark with oracles.Why do our children not know how to sleep?Do they fear we've left our waking late? At first light they dawnand have you rise and lead them out into the story

Viii

The river has told the grass again, a parable the day has forgotten by nine.And by ten, at your desk, you've forgotten it, too.                                     A man so easily distractedby himself. But what are you here forand what do they love, if not the way you leave each day                                     to change the world'smind and return with the night, your feet cold, your face lined with secrets?

Ix

One night, you arrive home late and tongue-tied                                     and the child wakes choking.For three hours you wait in emergency                                     and the boy sleeps himself well against you,while an old man and a woman come with broken heartsand don't leave. You drive home at three and you stand with the boyin the cold outside and you look up and show him the perfect celestial circle

X

Ringing the imperfect moon, and you wish you could tell him what it means.This is what silence looks like, you think later,                                     and a possum lands like ordnanceon the roof, and down in the paddocka dozen souls are reborn in the bawling cattle and the fox plays the geeselike oboes with broken reeds. Night is the world in its other life.

Xi

One's own life is an absurd miracle, waning as long as it lasts,in beauty or poverty, it makes no difference                                     in the end. One is nothing anymore.Our...