Written by
Seamus Heaney |
All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to range on window-sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.
Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.
|
Written by
Les Murray |
All the air conditioners now slacken
their hummed carrier wave. Once again
we've served our three months with remissions
in the steam and dry iron of this seaboard.
In jellied glare, through the nettle-rash season
we've watched the sky's fermenting laundry
portend downpours. Some came, and steamed away,
and we were clutched back into the rancid
saline midnights of orifice weather,
to damp grittiness and wiping off the air.
Metaphors slump irritably together in
the muggy weeks. Shark and jellyfish shallows
become suburbs where you breathe a fat towel;
babies burst like tomatoes with discomfort
in the cotton-wrapped pointing street markets;
the Lycra-bulging surf drips from non-swimmers
miles from shore, and somehow includes soil.
Skins, touching, soak each other. Skin touching
any surface wets that and itself
in a kind of mutual digestion.
Throbbing heads grow lianas of nonsense.
It's our annual visit to the latitudes
of rice, kerosene and resignation,
an averted, temporary visit
unrelated, for most, to the attitudes
of festive northbound jets gaining height -
closer, for some few, to the memory
of ulcers scraped with a tin spoon
or sweated faces bowing before dry
where the flesh is worn inside out,
all the hunger-organs clutched in rank nylon,
by those for whom exhaustion is spirit:
an intrusive, heart-narrowing season
at this far southern foot of the monsoon.
As the kleenex flower, the hibiscus
drops its browning wads, we forget
annually, as one forgets a sickness.
The stifling days will never come again,
not now that we've seen the first sweater
tugged down on the beauties of division
and inside the rain's millions, a risen
loaf of cat on a cool night verandah.
|
Written by
Rg Gregory |
to the seaside
to the seaside
to the change and peace of mind
to the easy la-
zy holiday
the leave-it-all-behind
to the seaside
to the sunshine
to the body-littered sands
to the deckchairs
and the funfairs
and the burst-your-ears brass bands
to the ice-cream
to the wasp-stings
to the sand-in-every-meal
to the castles
and the donkeys
and the plates of jellied eel
to the bosoms
and the bottoms
to the bodies-in-the-raw
to the he-men
and the paunches
to the what-the-butler-saw
(to the catch-my-eye
the hold-me-tight
the kiss-me-in-the-park
to the will-you
wont-you-let-me
to the bathing-in-the-dark)
to the landladies
and gloomy rooms
and out-of-here-by-ten
to the drizzle
and the boredom
and the going-round-the-bend
to the blisters
and the crying kids
the peeling aching backs
to the god-i-wish-
we'd-never-come-
i-wish-we'd-gone-to-jack's
to the getting-on
the train again
the joy of going home
to the roses
in the garden
and the being-left-alone
to the no-food-
in-the-larder
and the not-an-open-shop
to the ashes
in the fireplace
and the week-old washing up
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