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Unread 01-15-2005, 02:50 PM
Mark Allinson Mark Allinson is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Tomakin, NSW, Australia
Posts: 5,313
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Great choice, Janet. I met Gwen at Monash in the late eighties. This one is the second half of a pair. The first half is entitled "Barn Owl", and deserves to be posted, but I couldn't find either on the web so I just typed out part II.

BTW, I made the mistake of giving this poem to my daughter to read while browsing through Borders when I didn't have any tissues in my pocket.


II Nightfall

Forty years, lived or dreamed:
what memories pack them home.
Now the season that seemed
incredible is come.
Father and child, we stand
in time's long-promised land.

Since there's no more to taste
ripeness is plainly all.
Father, we pick our last
fruits of the temporal.
Eighty years old, you take
this late walk for my sake.

Who can be what you were?
Link your dry hand in mine,
my stick-thin comforter.
Far distant suburbs shine
with great simplicities.
Birds crowd in flowering trees,

sunset exalts its known
symbols of transience.
Your passionate face is grown
to ancient innocence.
Let us walk this hour
as if death had no power.

or were no more than sleep.
Things truly named can never
vanish from earth. You keep
a child's delight for ever
in birds, flowers, shivery-grass -
I name them as we pass.

"Be your tears wet?" You speak
as if air touched a string
near-breaking point. Your cheek
brushes on mine. Old king
your marvellous journey's done.
Your night and day are one

as you find with your white stick
the path on which you turn
home with the child once quick
to mischief, grown to learn
what sorrows, in the end,
no words, no tears can mend.




[This message has been edited by Mark Allinson (edited January 15, 2005).]
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