Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Content
- Preface
- Foreword By John Lucas
- Prologue
- To Tasmania with Mrs Meredith
- On the Right Side of the Earth
- We meet at last
- I've been wanting to ask …
- Dear Mr Simpson
- Taking things in
- A Bummer
- Swanport
- And for the Record
- Fax from Launceston to Michael
- A Hasty Rejoinder
- Something you can't deny
- The Interview
- In Mount Field National Park
- News of a Death
- On the Answering Machine
- In Flowerdale
- Hadn't we the Gaiety?
- About as far as we can go
- Your art Mrs Meredith
- The Princess Theatre, Launceston, 18th October, 1995
- Threads
- Journal entry for Tuesday, 31st Oct.
- Dangerous I know
- A Poem for Wybalenna Chapel
- Making an Exhibition
- A Last Glimpse
- Epilogue
- Melbourne Central Cemetery
- Select Bibliography
A Last Glimpse
from On the Right Side of the Earth
- Frontmatter
- Content
- Preface
- Foreword By John Lucas
- Prologue
- To Tasmania with Mrs Meredith
- On the Right Side of the Earth
- We meet at last
- I've been wanting to ask …
- Dear Mr Simpson
- Taking things in
- A Bummer
- Swanport
- And for the Record
- Fax from Launceston to Michael
- A Hasty Rejoinder
- Something you can't deny
- The Interview
- In Mount Field National Park
- News of a Death
- On the Answering Machine
- In Flowerdale
- Hadn't we the Gaiety?
- About as far as we can go
- Your art Mrs Meredith
- The Princess Theatre, Launceston, 18th October, 1995
- Threads
- Journal entry for Tuesday, 31st Oct.
- Dangerous I know
- A Poem for Wybalenna Chapel
- Making an Exhibition
- A Last Glimpse
- Epilogue
- Melbourne Central Cemetery
- Select Bibliography
Summary
Like crocheted yucca flowers
a lace bonnet froths
down over your shoulders.
In one light, periwigged,
Queen's Counsel at the Bench;
in another, like the Old Queen herself.
It's 1895, John Watt Beattie
is arranging you
in Hobart, your last months
tocking away. This time
the camera's not tilting up at you
to pursue elusive eyes:
it's looking down on a countenance
as laconic as a crotchety owl's,
on hands not flirting curls
but staunchly clasped against
the Day. You are beginning to think
it's not been worth the struggle,
writing to Parkes how you were born
or had put yourself under an evil star.
Perhaps you were thinking
of those Jane Austen days in Bath —
such a pretty and a little thing
daring in white muslin
to cross the Great Pump Room floor
and finger with a child's touch
that glittering thing on a blue ribbon
across the belly of the Duke of York,
causing vinegary old Queen Charlotte
almightily to smile.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Cutting the Clouds Towards , pp. 60Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 1999