And instructions for dealing with same.
You will not say what you like,
What you like is not what you will say,
As a general rule you must not say you like something,
You must say it is not unsuccessful,
And that as to its technical aspects, it is not
Without merit, and as to its symbols, it is
Not without resonance.
This approach, while generally accepted,
Is not without horseshit and I know what you’re thinking,
You’re thinking how is it the century’s monsters
Were not spotted? Where were the artists then, you’re thinking,
Why wasn’t something done earlier,
A word in the right place,
The professional tackle perhaps?
We’ll ask them. Right you lot!
You all heard the question. Where were you?
Why no warning? Why no signal? Isn’t that
The point? I mean correct me if I’m wrong
But what are you people actually for?
You. No behind you. Yes you. What’s your name?
OK Eliot, you tell me, when fascism rose up and
It was obvious what was going to happen,
Where the hell were you? I’m not a bloody idiot Eliot.
There are no poets in foxholes son.
That’s right. You lad, Auden is it? Come here Auden,
Am I hurting you Auden? I should be,
I’m standing on your hair.
You, Thomas, who gave you permission to speak
OF COURSE YOU NEED PERMISSION TO SPEAK YOU
USELESS TUB OF LARD YOU WILL SHUT UP I NEVER WANT
TO HEAR FROM YOU AGAIN SHUT
THE FUCK
UP
RUNNING ON THE SPOT THOMAS MOVE! HUP TWO HUP
TWO HUP
Come on men, let’s have it, you must know where you were!
You can trust me. Magritte face this way lad I SAID FACE THIS
WAY DO AS YOU’RE TOLD MAGRITTE
DON’T TELL ME YOU ARE FACING THIS WAY
YOU ARE NOT FACING THIS FUCKING WAY MAGRITTE
I AM LOOKING AT THE BACK OF YOUR FUCKING HAT
ONE WEEK SOLITARY
Joyce.
Where were the bloody writers when we needed them Joyce?
Where were you for instance at 0200 hours on May 4, 1942?
Working on a new book of knob jokes Joyce YOU THINK
YOU’RE FUCKING CLEVER DON’T YOU JOYCE
That was rhetorical Joyce, there is no need to answer that
Joyce. There is no need to answer that Joyce.
Joyce. There is no need laddie.
Joyce, on the command move you will shut up.
SHUT-UP!
Just talk among yourselves the rest of you.
Joyce. Shut-up is not a question.
It does not require an answer.
Dylan Thompson
Martyr to the turps, Dylan Thompson frequently woke in unfamiliar circumstances and attempted to catch the speech rhythms of the sea.A CHILD’S CHRISTMAS IN WARRNAMBOOL
One Christmas was so like another in those years around the sea town corner now, that I can never remember whether it was 106 degrees in 1953 or whether it was 103 degrees in 1956. All the Christmases roll into one down the wave-roaring salt-squinting years of yesterboy. My hand goes into the fridge of imperishable memory and out come: salads and sunburn lotions, the brief exuberant hiss of beer being opened and the laugh of wet-haired youths around a Zephyr 6, the smell of insect repellent and eucalyptus and the distant constant slowly listless bang of the flywire door. And resting on a formica altar, waiting for Ron, the biggest Pav in the world; a magic Pav, a cut-and-come-again Pav for all the children in all the towns across the wide brown bee-humming trout-fit sheep-rich two-horse country.
And the Aunts. Always the Aunts. In the kitchen on the black-and-white photographed beach of the past, playing out the rope to a shared childhood, caught in the undertow and drifting.
And some numerous Uncles, wondering sometimes why they weren’t each other, coming around the letterbox to an attacking field in the Test match and being driven handsomely by some middle-order nephew, skipping down the vowelflattening pitch and putting the ball into the tent-flaps on the first bounce of puberty.
Robert Bowell
Bowell’s family owned Queensland, New South Wales and the part of Victoria north of Tasmania. He was not mad. Even a bit. At all. Really.BURY MY HEAD AT WOUNDED KNEE
This damned debate I have, it slows
Me down, immobilises me,
Am I a Robert or a Bowell?
Is it me who’s making me
Important? Or the trick’s finessed
Perhaps by who I am. Because
I feel that when I do something
That’s genuinely me, unique
To me, outlandish, mad, so Robert,
That the reason I am doing
It is purely that I’m ME;
That maybe it is something that
The Bowells always do. It’s genes.
My parents. Did they do it? Is
It locked on to the DNA?
Would it be easier to do
Or not to do it? That’s the question,
Arm the sea of troubles and
Opposing by the end they take.
America, I doubt thee, let
Me weigh the Counts, there’s Burroughs, and
There’s me. We’re mad, we’re rich, we’re very
Dangerous, we’ve killed some women,
He his wife, I Jean, perhaps
Elizabeth but hey! we had
Some laughs though? Didn’t we? Why sure
We did. Barkeep, just hit me with
A shot of wry from time to time,
I won’t be long, this is important.
Didn’t we though? Some laughs? Oh maybe
Not in the mornings, sure, and not
The nights we went to hell but tell
Me sometimes, in the afternoon
Didn’t the little boy inside me
Smile at some impression that
Was recognised with pleasure by
The memory that I was trying to drown?
Larry Parkin
Larry, a crumpled and charming deep-voiced man who had normally just got off a train, was a member of ‘The Outfit’, a group which dominated postwar Australian verse. He had sex in 1963, before many of you were born.MR PEACOCK
‘This was Mr Peacock’s room. He dwelt
In deepest fantasy, you never knew
Exactly who he was or how he felt,
As leader or with bullet-hole in shoe.
He might be someone else, de Gaulle, St John,
It changed so often we became confused,
He’d plan to win a prize, embark thereon,
Then have it offered to him and refuse.
This is where he slept, just over here,
Though what he did at night, you’d never know,
The sunlamps just provided a veneer,
Long haul, he thought embalming was the go.
The chair is where he’d leave his favourite book,
Was most particular it not be moved,
We heard it rumoured once he took a look,
But unsubstantiated; can’t be proved.
The night he did the deed he got back late,
He told us, around 3.30, maybe 4,
“The lads and I have just farewelled a mate.
Farewelled him
