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 Poem for Wybalenna Chapel
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
In the working of the laws of God's
Providence, we have dispossessed
these poor people of this fair isle. In
that, we may hope, there is no sin;
but surely sin may lie heavily at our
doors, if we, blessed with civilisation
and Christianity, neglect to fulfil to
them the simplest duties laid upon us
by the requirements of Christian charity.
The Rev. Thos. Reibey, August 1st, 1883No sin, Mrs M? God help us! Your latter day
Augustines bouncing up and down
in creaking little cutters of 8 tons
shu\ing from isle to far-flung Ozzie isle
transporting to the dispossessed
infernal bigotries, baptismal bounty,
beautiful services for the dead. Oh, yes,
they read to them about duty
and turning the other cheek, calling it charity …
left behind them useful tracts — absolving whom?
Let's cut the crap, my glib allusions
to Prospero and Caliban. Dispossession
was colonial savagery on a scale
that's even now too great to comprehend.
Would you really say there was no sin?
I'll quote you: the very lowest creatures
in human form … a curiously close
resemblance to pug dogs … all the animal
instinct and adroitness for selfpreservation.
All your bull about native
place names was really dilettante taste
for euphony … like your lines about the sighing
breeze soughing through mossy trees
'midst delicate maidenhair, the rills
wimpling on round island rocks …/
By groves of fragrant sassafras.
How you giggled when dear Charles
did his impersonations of the dispossessed!
Family skeletons are being rattled here,
Louisa Anne, with a bad conscience
you'd call arrogant hindsight and some would
call their hardly bearable history.
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- Information
- Cutting the Clouds Towards , pp. 56 - 57Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 1999