Plays & Poems
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The Towers of Earth
“The warmth and reality of her poetry
make it a joy to speak.” Patricia Kennedy - ABC
“I like them
very much.” A.D. Hope (poet)
Mount Irvine Road
Look north and far along the Great Divide
how like the endless combers mountains break
or west the roll of ridge to Sydney plains
or turning south more blue black mountains ride.
The thunderstorms
roll up from south and west
as if a hand unwound a cloth of rain
towards embattlement of steep and crag
at last on mountain ramparts come to rest.
High on this
castle with its rough hewn walls
of grey rock precipice, I see the weather
act out its splendid show of shade and light
till cloud or night brings down the curtain fall.
Across dark
hollows of the vast ravine
move clouds like battleships afloat in air,
their shadows stately on the trees below
incessant pattern on the restless scene.
Or sky is turncoat
and monotonous grey
the bush grows sombre and the gumtrees gloom.
Only the tree fern keeps its burning green
as rain and mist assume the sodden day.
In Sydney side the
flotsam and the rush
and churning ranks of house and fence and street
stop eyes from sight of huge span of the sky
or grandiose clouds above these wastes of bush.
What city man sees
earth go stretching on
in one gigantic arc from north to south,
walled in with brick and tile and warren of street
the cloud and sunset all too swiftly gone.
“These poems were inspired by holidays in the Blue
Mountains.”
Elizabethan Press, 1969
Cliff Climbers, Katoomba
They live on the
astronomical alps of the world,
that strange brotherhood whose way we know
climbing perpetual unrewarding mountains
to set their flag of triumph high on show.
Few mountain
climbers will rest quiet at home
but with their feet in iron and picks of steel
they torture toeholds up demented slopes
with yawning cliffs below their frenzied heel.
All that the world
may feast on their glory an hour
though the meal next day be spurned as stale and scrap,
whatever was flattened down of love or heart
paid for the price of a deferential clap.
No need for truth
to be wrestled from roof of the world
it could be hidden here in the commonplace room,
the home no dungeon for the dull and doomed
but holding tight the threads of an ancient loom.
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