AFTER THREE WORKS BY LLOYD REES

1 (The Pinnacles, Mount Wellington)

Huge shambling forms of myth and song,
Bare rocks split open to the light
Are born of earthquake and the sky,
One like a throbbing pillar thrust

Between thighs soft as twilight sun,
Reflecting in warm golden tones
The hidden fire they circle round:
Stonehenge, corroboree and God.

2 (The Gorge, Launceston)

In old age he draws Mother Earth,
In charcoal lines crumbling and sharp
Both buries and burns her remains,
The rocks great molars collapsing,

Distorting the mouth of a pit
Roofed in by the swallowing dark,
The ash-soft reducible hills
Like slag from the blast-furnace sky.

3 (Sandy Bay, Hobart)

The light flares to a blaze and keeps
The world from darkness for an hour,
Descending from the sky to mark

A cross upon the rising sea,
The white sails flickering in the mist
Tall candles set among the waves.

(from: In the Shadow of Van Diemen's Land (1999) Cornford Press)

© Copyright: Graeme Hetherington