Michelle Cahill - Renovations

I try to make myself easy to shop for at Christmas.  I say, “if you must, then don’t spend more than fifteen dollars and make your selection from either a bottle of port or a discounted red wine; or confectionary which must include Rocky Road and anything that’s got ginger in it, maybe a gift voucher from Bunnings; next year’s diary (A5, one day to a page), or a poetry book (new, second-hand, doesn’t matter), and don’t worry if I might already have it, because I will find somebody to swap or share it with.”  I’ve got to admit, most years, people take me on my word.  That’s how it was this Christmas.  I received a paperback anthology, The Best Australian Poems 2013, edited by Lisa Gorton, Black Inc. publishers.  It becomes my distraction for the rest of Christmas day.  What I like to do with a book like this is go through it quickly the first time with a pencil and rate each poem based on the immediate appeal it has for me.  I will mark it a definite ‘NO’, a ‘Maybe’, or an ‘OK/YES’.  The ‘OK/Yes’s’ become part of me, then I go back through the ‘Maybe’s’.
In this post I include one of the immediate ‘OK/Yes’ poems from Best Australian Poems 2013.  It’s a modern sonnet by Michelle Cahill, Renovations.  I’ve only ever read two of Michelle’s poems (the other is in an earlier post of mine), and yet her style and content appeals to me – refreshing, because I am surprised at how few female poets are included in my list of favourites.  With Renovations, it seems the poet has just separated in a divorce (marriage laws defied me), and is busy setting up her own place in Sydney, renovating and furnishing.  There’s a sense of busy-ness and excitement but also a feeling of aloneness and a need for help to live a single life.  Anyway, see what you think of Renovations.
 

Renovations

Michelle Cahill (1969 -  )

 

It was a summer of stinking heat, hell-fire days,

nothing predictable but the violence of time

whistling throu a sou’ westerly, the dragon lizard

scampering to underbrush from crops of dry lawn.

Boxes in every half-filled room, masking-tape rolls,

anarchic cockroaches slewing between floorboards.

I learnt how to correct grey hair roots, presbyopia,

leaking showers.  The marriage laws defied me.

Then one tradie after another, phone calls, texts.

in my alacrity, I’d confuse their names, driving

from Canada Bay to Lidcombe, Ikea to Parramatta Road

for blackbutt, bamboo, terracotta.  Scott from Prospect

gave a quote I accepted for all the drop sheets, all

the brawn and Epoxy sealant it took to keep me single.

Reading some notes on Michelle’s background, I find she is a practising medical doctor – the same as William Carlos Williams was (another of my favourite poets).

One thing I like in this poem is the running together of lists of things (boxes ….. masking-tape rolls, anarchic cockroaches ……. blackbutt, bamboo, terracotta ….).  You see this in a number of Kenneth Slessor’s poems.  I believe Renovations in the title refers not only to our usual association with repair of property, but also to the poet herself making new again, restoring herself to good condition (I learnt how to correct grey hair roots, presbyopia …).  But why wait until you’re separated to attend to these things?  And there is so much to have to learn or re-learn in coping with this emotional change.  So much, that you get the feeling at some stage the poet could have easily given in and returned to the security of the relationship (all the brawn and Epoxy sealant it took to keep me single.).

 

My poem links into the post by way of another perspective on the often crappiness of human relationship.  Sometimes you’ve got to have a tough skin; have a laugh.  It’s a game; it’s a grinding down; a business and you’ve got to believe the outcome is worth it.

 

2012.  Even in a long standing marriage or relationship I have no control over how a person may speak to me.  I learnt this in a conflict resolution training course I did once.  It said I can only choose how I respond – totally unaffected or aggressive.  Unaffected is best, but I should still firmly and calmly let the other person know that I do not accept being spoken to in that way – I am too good for that!  Anyway, that’s the course I did, while there must be another school of thought that says, “you’ve got to accept, when you’ve provided the justification, then people can speak to you however they want.”

Keeping up Appearances
 

Driving the suburbs in Sydney

and I miss the turn at Turramurra

so we have to back-track from Pymble

getting lost not knowing the right turn-off

or which BP service station it’s supposed to be

around Kissing Point Road left into Yenko Drive

and then Simon rings her mobile

to find out where we are

because he wants to know when

to put the piece of pork on

and that sends her into a fury

because her mobile’s a ‘piece of shit’

and it’s embarrassing and our sat-nav

has not yet been returned

and technology’s leaving me behind

because for some reason

I refuse to - ‘get with the program!’

but don’t worry, as soon as the house sells

she’ll walk out and is going to get one of those

Samsung Galaxies on Monday

and I’ve kept my calm right up to now

because I don’t like being late

or lost either

though I am feeling very, very tired

and I start to say a sentence beginning with the word, ‘look’

and she says, ‘shut your fucking mouth!’

as we smile our way down the driveway

to where Simon and Jan and the kids

seem so pleased to see us.

                                              J. O. White

Cyril Tawney - Naval ditties, The A25 Song

I’ve noticed that a couple of my posts featuring naval ditties sung brilliantly by Shep Woolley or Cyril Tawney attract a bit of interest (probably from ex-RN’ers around the world).  Anyway, where I think there might be interest I will endeavour to please, so here are the words to another favourite Cyril Tawney Navy song.  It’s called, The A25 Song.  As with most of Cyril Tawney’s work, the song is ‘old’ Navy – fledgling days of the Fleet Air Arm and set in the struggle of WWII.  Cyril did thirteen years in the RN (joined at 16 years old), but had talent and left to do time as the longest serving professional folk singer in Britain.

The A25 Song

(Cyril Tawney 1930 -2005)

 

They say in the Air Force a landing’s OK,

If the pilot gets out and can still walk away,

But in the Fleet Air Arm the prospect is grim,

If the landing’s piss poor and the pilot can’t swim.

Cracking show! I’m alive!

But I still have to render my A25.

 

I fly for a living and not just for fun,

I’m not very anxious to hack down a hun,

And as for deck landings at night in the dark,

As I told wings this morning, blow that for a lark.

Cracking show!  I’m alive!

But I still have to render my A25.

 

When the batsman gives lower, I always go higher,

I drift o’er to starboard and prang my Seafire,

The boys in the gofers think that I’m green,

But I get the commission from Super Marine.

Cracking show!  I’m alive!

But I still have to render my A25.

 

They gave me a Barra to beat up the fleet,

I shot up the Rodney and Nelson a treat,

I forgot the high mast that sticks out from Formid….

And a seat in the gofers was worth fifty quid.

Cracking show!  I’m alive!

But I still have to render my A25.

 

I thought I was comin in high enough but,

I was fifty feet up when the batsman gave ‘cut’,

And loud in my earphones the sweet angels sang,

Float, float float, float, float, float, float, float, float,

Prang!

Cracking show!  I’m alive!

But I still have to render my A25.

 

The moral of this story is easy to see,

A Fleet Air Arm pilot you never should be,

But stay on the shore and get two rings or three,

And go out every night on the piss down at Lee.

Cracking show! I’m alive!

But I still have to render my A25.

 

I have seen versions of The A25 Song where there are up to seven additional verses, but this is the one I have on CD.  For the uninitiated, an A25 is an accident report form; a Barra is a type of aircraft; and ‘Formid..’ refers to HMS Formidable, an Illustrious class aircraft carrier in commission during WWII.  The times I read this song, it makes me feel how quickly we distance from actual experiences and recollections of what we once knew as familiar technology and methods.  Very soon, the people of a time won’t receive that feeling of how it was and what it was like.  That’s why it’s important for poets in the present to capture and preserve observations, emotions and experiences of our time, no matter how mundane.

I use a poem of mine titled, ‘Nirimba’ as the link in this post.  It’s a Fleet Air Arm link.  I was totally unaware of the history of ‘HMAS Nirimba’ when I first joined the Navy and that establishment to undertake my three and a half years of trade training.  We had joined the Navy to see the sea so why were we being bussed inland, miles from any water, to an abandoned airfield west of Sydney?  The Navy’s hold on an inland aerodrome went back to the second world war when the British Pacific fleet used the RAAF facility (Schofields aerodrome) as a maintenance base for their Fleet Air Arm (a Mobile Naval Air Base – MONAB).  At that time, it was commissioned as HMS Nabstock.  After the war, the RAN set the base up as their apprentice training establishment (RANATE).  In my poem I try to go back and capture ‘Nirimba’ and the beautiful innocence of our young time when we were Naval Apprentices.  Soon, there will be too much distance for anybody to feel how it truly was or know what it was like.  The Navy’s ‘Nirimba’ decommissioned in 1994 and the facilities handed on to the Education Department to become a college precinct in western Sydney.

2011.  HMAS Nirimba was the Royal Australian Navy’s apprentice training establishment from 1956 to 1994.  It was located at Quakers Hill in Sydney, miles inland on the site of a fleet air arm base from the second world war.  Apprentices spent three and a half years (seven terms) at Nirimba before going to sea.  A lengthy time by today’s terms to develop a unique culture.  I was an apprentice there from January 1969 to July 1972.

Nirimba

 

Go back,

way, way back,

  before the Richmond line was electrified,

    before Parklea,

      before muppets, before round rig,

when Bruno was the bouncer at the Blacktown RSL,

  and the Robin Hood was out of bounds,

before Facility 12,

  before purpose built brick buildings

    replaced corrugated iron and concrete floors,

      open ablution blocks left over from the war,

bucket and pogo stick laundering,

before rough play became bullying and bastardization,

  when character guidance was still taught,

    debutante balls with white gloves,

      cardboard detachable collars and crisp starched shirts,

Look up, look up! Don’t look down,

  there’s nothing on the ground,

    one day you may find,

      you have to square off and show you are the better man,

and some of the old salts still remembering,

modeled it on the British,

with an emphasis on pride,

loyalty, example, perseverance, guts and heart,

  Saturday morning working parties,

    winter afternoons on sporting fields,

     assembled under patron explorers,

Bass, Banks, Stirling and Tasman,

Dampier, King, Bligh, then Cook,

  where cheers went up for service,

    for division, for term, for hut

     for being a part, and the love of life,

when attendance at Sunday service was compulsory,

and lingering, longing looks,

upon Chaplain Rossier’s daughters,

  when rejection hurt,

    before free love,

when local schoolgirls were bussed in to cinema dances,

no alcohol, no drugs and strict ten o’clock finishes,

  before videos, before computers and personal television sets,

    competed with the focus and jibes at Mr Marks movies,

clacking mechanically through projector sprockets and guides

reel changes, jams, burnt celluloid and missing cinemascope lenses,

  and the cinema, the cinema the central point,

    when warrants were read from the steps,

to the prejudice of good order and discipline,

and a boy could get fourteen days in Holsworthy prison,

or seven days MUPs for silent contempt

  and a man’s morals were measured in his performance review,

    and Mrs Clarke knew every boy’s name,

      looking eagerly and expectantly for mail,

back when folk packaged parcels and wrote letters, cards

for which waiting taught virtue of patience, and receiving

was something held to carry treasured

in a private corner of a cheap wood ply locker,

  kit musters, cleanliness and inspections

    when liberty men presented at the main gate

     before cars,

      before civvies

shaven hair, blue blazers and private school pocket rig

uniforms massing down Quakers Hill road on foot

when that was still a brisk walk in the country

and a full weekend and freedom tasted sweet

released early from Friday workshops and classrooms

divisions and gunnery jacks with red faces

Look up, look up!  Don’t look down,

  there’s nothing on the ground

    look me in the eye, stand tall!  With men

who believed pride and confidence, something

having to be yelled into a boy,

  before economies and efficiencies argued

    and a seven term investment

      seemed not too long

        to have to wait for return

and it was mind, body and soul to be fed

  before R & Q, before outside catering

    when tables were always laden with generosity

fresh bread, unopened jars, clean butter, and

canned herrings in tomato sauce

take all you want, eat all you take

  you have to be fighting fit, to be fit to fight

when Sister Hazel practiced a brand of military nursing

based on the Crimea, when PTI’s were still feared

and leather soled boots struck at the double on roadways.

Look up, look up.

  don’t look down.

nothing on the ground, anymore

  nothing on the ground

    .... anymore.

                                                                   J. O. White

Charles Causley - Timothy Winters

I’ve been wanting to post this well known poem by Charles Causley for some time.  It’s called, Timothy Winters.  I love the poem for a number of technical reasons – the rhyming, a four feet five feet rhythm and a voice that I guess is Cornish (Charles Causley came from Cornwall), so it makes you want to recite it in your best British accent.  Then there’s the entertaining sense of humour and the nice hook at the end, ‘come one angel, come on ten: Timothy Winters, Lord.’

Charles Causley was a schoolteacher, and this poem certainly stands testimony to the belief that if I am to be a poet I should write about things I know or have observed.  Well, OK, about the things I know, as well as what I have considered toward my observations, together with what my emotional response is to them.  I think that’s how I’ve come to select Timothy Winters for this post.  I’m thinking how society treats people wrong sometimes, especially from lack of justice within our social systems.  We all have a built in sense of what is fair and of what makes something wrong – sometimes we need reminding of it.  Here in our news in Sydney we have public outcry from the parents of an innocent young boy who was walking with his girlfriend through the city when he was ‘king hit’ and killed by some thug who went on attacking other victims on the same night.  The thug received a prison sentence of only four years on good behaviour.  I know revenge is not a part of justice, but I feel for the parents – at their faith and trust in the system and how they can’t help feel they’ve been let down.

Let down and duped by the system – the legal system, the political system, the welfare system.  Poor Timothy Winters, needing all the help in the world makes social justice and the school’s prayers of petition look like a joke when he, “roars ‘Amen’!”

Timothy Winters

(Charles Causley – 1917 to 2003)

 

Timothy Winters comes to school

With eyes as wide as a football pool,

Ears like bombs and teeth like splinters:

A blitz of a boy is Timothy Winters.

 

His belly is white, his neck is dark,

And his hair is an exclamation mark.

His clothes are enough to scare a crow

And through his britches the blue winds blow.

 

When teacher talks he won’t hear a word

And shoots down dead the arithmetic-bird,

He licks the pattern off his plate

And he’s not even heard of the Welfare State.

 

Timothy Winters has bloody feet

And he lives in a house on Suez Street,

He sleeps in a sack on the kitchen floor

And they say there aren’t boys like him any more.

 

Old man Winters likes his beer

And his missus ran off with a bombardier,

Grandma sits in the grate with a gin

And Timothy’s dosed with an aspirin.

 

The Welfare Worker lies awake

But the law’s as tricky as a ten-foot snake,

So Timothy Winters drinks his cup

And slowly goes on growing up.

 

At morning prayers the Headmaster helves

For children less fortunate than ourselves,

And the loudest response in the room is when

Timothy Winters roars ‘Amen!’

 

So come one angel, come on ten:

Timothy Winters says ‘Amen’

Amen amen amen amen.

Timothy Winters, Lord.

At first reading, this poem may appear to be a swipe at Christian belief, a mockery of religious process, a suggestion that the Lord is powerless and blind to reality.  But I don’t think that is what the poem says.  If it is a swipe, then it is a swipe at one individual’s (the headmaster) and the system’s (school) blindness to recognize that there is already one among them who is in immediate need.  Yes, Timothy Winters roaring ‘Amen’ is a joke but it is a joke on the system that goes through a ritual of morning prayer yet never thinks that it should bear true witness.

I haven’t read much of Charles Causley.  He was an English poet, born in Cornwall.  He served in the Royal Navy during WWII so he must have been a decent sort of bloke and because of that I’m keen to read more of his work.

 

I wrote my poem for this post some time ago.  It comes from what I observed in the press, my consideration toward that situation and my emotional response to it, which was a sense of injustice and social misunderstanding.  I don’t know, a lot of times I can’t help but feel for the underdog no matter what shit he’s in or what he’s done.  Don’t let the bastards win man!

 

2000:  Listening to the news, I couldn’t help but feel the anguish and hurt of a man in a hopeless situation.

What About the Man

 

A man snatched his son

at Port Norlunga and

took him to a warehouse

in Lonsdale.

 

The man had been living there

since being estranged

from his wife,

it was a custody battle.

 

The man

threatened to set fire

to himself and the boy.

Police said there was a smell of fuel in the area.

 

They had to surround the factory with a SWAT team,

ambulances, fire engines

red hoses run out

police negotiators.

 

They got it all for television

on the six o’clock news,

you could see the news reader thought

the man had done something wrong.

 

She was calm

on the side of right

and was caring

and beautiful.

 

The soft and sweet potential

of a mother’s love

assured us the man gave himself up

and was taken into custody.

 

Everything was OK,

the boy was re-united with his mother,

a happy ending to a nasty situation

thought the lovely news reader

 

And she carefully smiled to assure us

that the woman was good and loved her son

while the man

was led away by two very official policemen.

 

He

will be charged

with abduction

and endangering life.

 

Hey!

what about the man

who snatched his son

at Port Norlunga!
                                   J. O. White
 

Les Murray - Cotton Flannelette (bush fires)

We’ve had a tough few weeks here in New South Wales with early hot, dry summer conditions and out of control bush fires.  Australia is well acquainted with the fury, tragedy and loss from huge fire, unstoppable fire.  We have a network of Rural Fire Service (RFS) volunteers who answer the call to give up their time and risk life to fight these fires and save property and life.  Whenever, wherever there is an outbreak and the yet slow boiling brown white smoke in the distance agitates dread.  To when racing flame becomes visible metres above bursting tree tops leaping and licking to grip onto the living with fear.  We were lucky this time not to have anybody lose life in the fires, only property destroyed - more than 100 houses.  One of the landmarks near where I live somehow survived.  There’s this roadhouse at Lake Macquarie that has a big prawn out the front, fabricated, painted and stuck on top of a tall pole.  Everybody knows the landmark and refers to it as the ‘big prawn’.  You give and receive direction by following the ‘big prawn’, “just past the big prawn mate and then turn left”; “wait for me at the big prawn”; “if you pass the big prawn then you’ve gone too far”.  Well, the service station buildings are totally ruined, but that old ‘prawn’s’ still standing.  And people talk about it as if the ‘prawn’ was all there ever was, “did you hear the big prawn servo got burnt out?  No mate, it’s OK, the ‘big prawn’s’ still standing”.
The fresh experience of fire and the hero status of the survivor have drawn me to post a favourite Les Murray poem.  It’s called, Cotton Flannelette and it describes the agony of a young girl so badly burned that the country doctor has given up on her.  Only through the unsleeping absolute mother’s persistence (in the untrained perfect language) and her own plea to shake the bed does the child bear the pain, survive and live to carry terrible scarring, Braille tattoos and contour whorls.  Like a lot of Murray’s work, this poem is written from part experience.  Les Murray had an aunt (Myrtle) who had suffered terrible burns as a child.  I’m not sure if he knew how the accident occurred, but Les recalls seeing his aunt when he was a small boy and wondering about the scars that covered her exposed skin.

Cotton Flannelette

Les Murray (1938 – )

 

 

Shake the bed, the blackened child whimpers,

O shake the bed! Through beak lips that never

will come unwry.  And wearily the iron-

framed mattress, with nodding crockery bulbs,

jinks on its way.

Her brothers and sisters take

shifts with the terrible glued-together baby

when their unsleeping, absolute mother

reels out to snatch an hour, back to stop

the rocking and wring pale blue soap-water

over nude bladders and blood-webbed chars.

 

Even their cranky evasive father

is awed to stand watches rocking the bed.

lids frogged shut, O please shake the bed,

her contour whorls and Braille tattoos

from where, in her nightdress, she flared

out of hearth-drowse to a marrow shriek

pedalling full tilt firesleeves in mid air,

are grainier with repair

than when the doctor, crying Dear God woman!

No one can save that child.  Let her go!

spared her the treatments of the day.

 

Shake the bed.  Like: count phone poles, rhyme,

classify realities, bang the head, any

iteration that will bring, in the brain’s forks,

the melting molecules of relief,

and bring them again.

O rock the bed!

Nibble water with bared teeth, make lymph

like arrowroot gruel, as your mother grips you

for weeks in the untrained perfect language,

till the doctor relents.  Salves and wraps you

in dressings that will be the fire again,

ripping anguish off agony,

 

and will confirm

the ploughland ridges the gum joins

in your woman’s skin, child saved by rhythm

for the sixty more years your family weaves you

on devotion’s loom, rick-racking the bed

as you yourself, six years old, instruct them.

 

To me, it’s the repeat of the plea, O shake the bed; rock the bed; please shake the bed, that conveys the sheer agony a young burn victim must have suffered in the period when Les Murray’s aunt Myrtle was a girl.  I can’t help wondering how it happened.  The clue is in the title, Cotton Flannelette, and the lines, ‘in her nightdress, she flared out of hearth-drowse to a marrow shriek pedalling full tilt firesleeves in mid air.”  The girl has fallen asleep in front of an open fire (hearth drowse) and her nightclothes, pyjamas have heated to ignition point.  She has run and waved her arms in panic and fanned the flames even more (pedalling full tilt firesleeves in mid air).  Suddenly bursting into flame in front of a fire was not uncommon in Les Murray’s aunt’s time and even up until the 1980’s.  I can recall strong warnings about sitting too close to the fire and what to do if I did catch on fire – drop and roll, drop and roll!  In later years, manufacturing standards tightened to ensure children’s pyjamas were made from fire resistant material.  Cotton flannelette was one material that must have had a low flash point.

 

My own poem for the post was written many years ago.  It is from the country, is from experience and is from fire – not bush fires, but cane fire, back in the days when they used to send a raging fire through sugar cane to burn off the leaf and tops prior to hand cutting.

 

1980.  Growing up around Pinnacle in the Pioneer Valley surrounded by sugar cane and all activity of it’s farming.  The setting conjures back sweet emotion, but I could never have been a farmer.

 

Cane

 

I know cane.

I know cane as a kid,

Living in cane fields.

I know the sour smell of a mill,

Tall silver smoke stacks,

Belching white brown smoke,

Whisping white clouds of heat from vents,

At night in the light of scattered yellow lamps,

The huge black bulk of sheet-iron sheds,

Train tracks,

Loaded carriages and activity of the crushing.

 

I know the trains.

Sugar trains, ghost trains.

Counting the carriages,

Car after car of white square boxes,

Each encrusted with spilled raw sugar,

Set in crevices and corners,

Rock candy to be broken away,

While the black loco argues through the cutting.

 

I know the fields

The sweet smell of fresh ploughed dirt,

Rich black or red or brown,

Furroughs running straight and true forever,

Distance vast distance,

Black birds dotted far away,

Fussing and feeding,

In the clear open spaces,

Left clear and clean before the planting.

 

I know the fire,

Racing unstoppable through the cane,

Can hear the fire coming,

Burning cinders thrown high,

Into the dark sky,

Tall grasses beside rutted dirt tracks,

Where men wait with wet sugar bags,

For the cinder to fall burning,

Swiftly there’s silence,

And the men gather in the gloom,

To talk of the cane and the cutting.

 

I know hot afternoons,

Burning tops,

Row upon row of dry brown foliage,

Left over from harvested crop,

Bundles of coarse leaf in my hands,

Running the rows setting fire,

To the debris and thoughts,

Swimming away in the creek,

Cane swimming away in the creek.

                                     J. O. White