Two Poems
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Two Poems
Mute Swans Over Carraiglea
Four with their white wingswheezing a refrain, followingthe black coastline. All lifelifts to their passing.
Seeing them is not dependenton eyesight, sensing their musicalflight not dependent on hearing.Each wingsweep bridges silence.
The leader flies higher and the othersstack below to step down so the firstis last, the second, third.Harmonics are also involved.
All life knows this more tanits own sentience. All inanimatepresence shudders under the force.Rocks shimmer, Carraiglea shudders. [End Page 373]
The Old Ways and Swimming at Barleycove
“The weather is getting more intense everywhere in the world.”
—talk of the village
Another orange alert. A big one coming in from the Atlantic.We’ll be red by tomorrow morning, interleaved with the storm.Tracy has been stocking up with provisions, and, while in the village,she was told that the older generation rarely, if ever, swam
at Barleycove—its long sweeping beach, the rock-walls projectingdeep into ocean. It’ll be spring tide when the storm hits the west coast,with dramatic surges inevitable—the coast eroded, town streetsflooded, seawalls undermined. At Barleycove the pontoon bridge
has already been removed, lest it be swept away into shipping lanes,more garbage finding its way with the currents. Tracy is told howbefore the pontoon, families bathing would get caught with the tide’ssudden influx, forced to carry picnic hampers back on their heads,
wading between sandbanks. Tomorrow, force ten gales willleave their purple patch off the coast and lash plumes of coal smokevomiting from village chimneys. Tomorrow, heavy rain and sleet;snow will gather violently on high ground, dust the radar domes.
According to the old ways of some, the beach at Barleycove is a death-trap, swimming there a trick of the leisure class. At the bookends, where life-savers lament summers, rips drag everything out, the bigger they come.“If you’re fool enough, swim only the centre, otherwise look on and wonder.”
Another orange alert. A big one coming in from the Atlantic.We’ll be red by tomorrow morning, interleaved with the storm.Tracy has been stocking up with provisions, and gathering know-howto make sense of what will come, traditions to read what’s almost upon us. [End Page 374]
John Kinsella is an Australian poet whose latest collection, Jam Tree Gully, was published by Norton, with his next collection, “Firebreaks,” due out next year.
