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Postcard from Orebic
for Michael FarrellPostcard from Orebic
A sad, rusted pipe arches from the water
like an old outback lyre, crumbling
away before touching the shore. And
Australia, that dry beast,
has grown on frozen love and England,
cast down into the caverns, has melted
into the ether. Thousands flock to find it
but the wilting lyres of the sea
strand them on rocky islands where pleasures
emerge in the smoke of limestone
and cracked, orange paint. We can return
to England at any time, of course,
though only in books – old books –
and on the voices of elderly women
in Lindfield backyards. It is love, however,
that will always be lost. For love, stretched
taut on a rusting Dalmatian lyre,
both thrives in the far away seas
and forever anticipates our wandering
sorrow. That startling, ethereal love!
‘… out of the caves, Darkness cast a handful of pale
tumbling pigeons into the light…’
- Sonnet 2.11, Sonnets to Orpheus, by Rainer Maria Rilke
Post-1788ism
Post-1788ism
fast habitats and dirigible
fetish i
deas floating various skel
etons = ships like burning
like hazy place burning
incorruptible corrosion and needle
hole t
races inky
sea Cooks white gho
sts spasms marching
out
luminous lum
inaries strolling the s
fs for tree traces
and humble tar
tans draped over
crackling white
carcasses
Cook + men firm sha
dows of men in b/w
shrubs lamps
burning forthright kneading
space marching
yawn
ing fires slump un
der midnight faces
painted team colours th
ere’s a place just
back from here
smoke ri
sing up stars mimicking
try!
new avenues in
rhyme retro
grade amnesty smoke ri
sing up up u
p into stars
floating skeletons =
ships ship laced
together pound the man
icured length of law
n back there my point
place my backyard law
n light wispy
leaves you saw it you c
lawed did heavens
help us but i
wasnt there ei
ther.
Stuart Cooke was born in 1980 and lives in Sydney. His poetry, translations, fiction and essays have been published widely in Australia, and in the USA and UK. He is currently completing a PhD thesis on Australian and Chilean Indigenous poetics.
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