| SASSI CHIANTIGIANI Tuscan Landscapes II Squared stone, rough Chianti stone, stone set square to take the steep wall's corner weight: bone-white, gray as old straw or brown as bare arms when the gathering, la vendemmia, brings the burdened baskets from the still-warm vineyard slopes. Here le rondini, the swallows, wheel and wheel in final frenzy in shrivelling autumn skies. Rough-laid stone of terraces, prim walls of farmyard prisons, the tiled towers of filial hearth; Chianti stone of every fortressed town - even Etruscan arch and tomb brambled by insolent berry barbs. Scarred stone turned by the plough; stone to be torn down; to be hurled; then set square again, stone on stone. August 1991 |
| MY FIFTY FOURTH BIRTHDAY POEM (Canton, China, February 1990) There are three positions for the hands: linked in the lap; unlinked; hand on knee. Ageing I await wisdom; rain falls in cold hurtling drops through six banyan trees and the drift of blue incense. There are three positions for the hands: linked in the lap; unlinked; hand on knee. Here waiting for some sign, message, that wisdom will come, the cold creeps across the terrace and sets my bones in cramped positions. I think now rather than be wise I would have the warmth of you. February 1990 First published: A Selection of Chinese and Australian Poems Also in Lovesongs, Lovescenes, Australian Lyric Poems |
| Poetry of Glen Phillips |
| Academic, writers' and publishing sites |
| Poet, university teacher & Associate Professor of English |
| Poems from three collections |
| Spring Burning Lovesongs, Lovescenes Sacrificing the Leaves |
| Article on John Kinsella, Poetry & Art |
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| � Copyright 2001 |
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| A PROPER MAN "Why don't you get yourself a proper man," she said. Back in those days people hushed their voices speaking of the widow's 'boarder' - some drifter whom we children learned did something more than chop wood or stand with unbuttoned waistcoast watching the runner beans wind themselves around crossed stakes in her garden patch. The same with the men of the maiden aunts, who came back from the war divorced, missing more than shrapnel shards extracted from the cranial bone. No church marriage, then, just lean, unsmiling relatives in the front parlour, perched, mindful of the dark swing of the shunned cock. So why am I not a proper man? These are forward-looking times, even politicians survive several wives, priests grow beards and have children millionaires buy themselves Filipinas or get Aids. At least I can show almost twenty years of modest sonnets. We have a house and garden, the milk and papers come; there's a cat that sleeps in the sun. O what have I done? |
| ROCK DRAGONS |