Bruce Dawe - 'wood-eye'

Some blokes you come across seem to have one thing on their minds – sex; nothing else, everything’s to do with sex.  Their conversation is overloaded, overworked with continual sexual innuendo, connotation, clichés, jokes – and they’ll give a knowing wink as they work references like, ‘limp dick’, ‘big tits’ and ‘pussy’ into whatever it is you’re talking about.  A favourite Australian poet of mine, Bruce Dawe, captures this sort of character brilliantly in his poem, wood-eye.  It’s about a group of blokes who spend time together in hospital in a cancer ward.  One guy in the group has a compulsion to see sex in everything – ‘In Wood-eye’s world all roads led to Gomorrah’.  The title of the poem and the name given to the character is a play on a phrase “Wood-eye” uses in fantasising over having sex with the nursing sisters.  The phrase normally comes after somebody might ask a question, like, “Would you screw her?” – response, “Would I? Would I what!” (meaning, ‘yes I would’).  In the case of Dawe’s character fixated by sex, the question need not be asked, only implied.  ‘Wood-eye’ makes his statement and everybody knows what he means, “Would I? Would I what!”  Anyway, read the poem and see what you think of ‘Wood-eye’.

wood-eye

(Bruce Dawe, 1930 - )

No nursing-sister ever walked

into our ward but Wood-eye cocked an eye

(the good one, still unbandaged)

in our direction, lay there like a lamb

thinking his lion’s thoughts. Calm fingers took

like a professional sneak-thief his stirred pulse.

I’ve never seen a man whose libido’s red-light

as steadily burned in that last street

whose name nobody knows. In Wood-eye’s world

all roads led to Gommorrah where he practiced

as a sort of resident specialist on call

24 hours a day. No instrument

but had it’s phallic relevance: thermometer,

spatula, syringe were sign-posts on the way

to a consummation devoutly to be wished ….

‘Would I?’ he murmured, writhing on the rack

of unrealizable possibilities as some cool

sister exited: Oh Jesus, would I, what!’

 

So we called him ‘Wood-eye’. Something in his look

suggested that that eye-ball swivelling

in its carven socket, and that unseen eye

under the gauze-pad were like wooden things

intent on meaning more than just themselves

totems, you might say, to which we looked

for meaning while we hunched around the ward

or lay like anchorites on sheets that smelled

as clean as baker’s aprons. Wood-eye’s wit

flapped like a pennon on a distant hill. He was the ravaged,

he was mystery, the figure slouching off into the night,

into the gun-fire crackling like leaves,

coming back at dawn and saying nothing

or nothing with his lips that could drown out

the heavy music of his silences.

 

And if now I could know

his cancer cured, the bandages dispersed,

the hospital a fleeting memory,

the knives not feared, the sexy sisters gone

from his mind’s racing rink,

the need to grin upon a leaden fate,

all passed away, all passed,

                                       would I rejoice

until this sober skin

burst open like a grape from which might be stamped out

the final wine of love,

                              would I rejoice, then,

would I, would I what!

I don’t know about you, but in the first verse I’m having a sly laugh at ‘Wood-eye’, thinking he’s absurd, not only for how he obviously thinks, but also because he continues to think that way despite the predicament he’s in, dying of cancer – like, be serious, give it a rest mate, you’re in hospital for christ sake!  But old ‘Wood-eye’s’ still ‘writhing on the rack of unrealiseable possibilities’.  Then in the second verse I get the feeling ‘Wood-eye’ is a bit of a hero in the eyes of the other fellas – ‘ ....... wit flapped like a pennon on a distant hill, ……he was mystery ……….coming back at dawn  ………….  the heavy music of his silences’.  I think he was a hero because of his refusal to give up – to give up his sexual desire.  Instead, to openly and boldly maintain his interest in lust, ‘if I’m still thinking about sex, then I must be still alive!’  It makes us wonder about the importance sex gives to the purpose and meaning of life.  The status of hero is confirmed in the last verse.  It almost seems Wood-eye’s humour, sexual innuendos, clichés helped the others to survive, while he himself died.

In each of my posts I try to give a poem that I’ve written, influenced by one of my favourite poets.  My poem in this post is, A Moment With Al.  The subject of the poem reminds me to be always observant of the simple situations in life.  This is my life.  It isn’t always exciting, active or profound – mostly it isn’t!  And that is what I am given to write.  So I stop to talk to an old guy at work and he tells me about this cancer operation he’s going in for.  I’m thinking of Dawe’s ‘Wood-eye’ when the old guy starts telling me that his doctor’s a good looking sort with silky, black hair and she touches him on the leg ……….. good on you Al, you’re still alive!

2012.   Sometimes we don’t fully appreciate that each person has life outside the gate.  And that life is very real and personal and a million miles from the game played out in the factory.
 

 

A Moment With Al

 

Walk through the gate

beneath the liquid amber trees,

their branches now gnarled fingers

held warming toward a feeble winter sun.

Stop and talk to old Al,

of rain and garden mulch

and the August winds

that will dry the ground out,

but Al tells me he won’t be preparing

his gardens for spring,

not this year,

he’s going into hospital

to have a cancer cut out of his chest.

He went and saw Stuey

to take long service leave

but Stuey said take it as sick leave,

that’s what it’s for.

Al thought that was kind

at a time when kindness was needed.

He’ll be away four weeks,

on the operating table two hours,

Charlestown private,

that he had trouble finding,

ended up parking in the council car-park

and searching on foot.

He told the receptionist of the trouble,

she said we’ve got a car-park

right here under the hospital,

at which, Al gives my arm

a knowing punch-line tap

from the back of his hand, car park!

I couldn’t even find the building

so I wouldn’t want to be trying

to find a fucking car-park!

I hoped the doctor

could find all the cancer.

He says the doctor’s a woman,

then quickly bloke-a-fies it by saying

her name’s Tinika, about 40, slim,

Al’s concentration during diagnosis

may not have been entirely steady, but

I guess he’ll be steady enough on the table.

                                                                      J. O. White