The Golden Bird: New and Selected Poems

The Golden Bird

The Golden Bird

New and selected poems by

Robert Adamson

Published by Black Inc.,

an imprint of Schwartz Media Pty Ltd

Level 5, 289 Flinders Lane

Melbourne Victoria 3000 Australia

email: [email protected]

http://www.blackincbooks.com

© Robert Adamson 2008.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior consent of the publishers.

The National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Adamson, Robert, 1943-

The golden bird : new and selected poems / Robert Adamson.

9781863952873 (pbk.)

Includes index.

A821.3

Cover design by Thomas Deverall

This book is for Juno, always

A Bend in the Euphrates

In a dream on a sheet of paper I saw

a pencil drawing of lovers: they seemed perfect,

Adam and Eve possibly. Stepping into reality,

I read lines of a poem on a piece

of crumpled rag I kept trying to smooth—Egyptian

linen, so fine it puzzled to imagine such a delicate

loom. In a flash I saw two dirty-breasted ibis

and heard their heads swish: black bills

swiped the cloudy stream, and in the rushes

I heard needles stitching, weaving features

into the landscape, clacking as they shaped

an orange tree, then switched a beat to invent

blue-black feathers for crows, the pointed

wedges of their beaks. A fox rustles

through wild lantana as I step through into

the garden and, becoming part of the weave,

notice the tide turn, its weight eroding mudbanks,

bringing filth in from the ocean. A raft of flotsam

breaks away, a duckling perched on the thicket

of its hump. I use the murky river for my ink,XII

draw bearings on the piece of cloth, sketch

a pair of cattle egrets bullying teal into flight.

The map’s folded away, I travel by heart now,

old lessons are useless. I shelter from bad weather

in the oyster farmer’s shack. The moon falls in a

column of light, a glowing epicycle—

this pale wandering spot on my writing table

these fragments of regret: XII

DREAMING UP MOTHER

Where I come from, the belated homework

Green Prawn Map

In memory of my grandfather H.T. Adamson

Morning before sunrise, sheets of dark air

hang from nowhere in the sky.

No stars there, only here is river.

His line threads through a berley trail,

a thread his life. There’s no wind

in the world and darkness is a smell alive

with itself. He flicks

a torch, a paper map Hawkesbury River

& District damp, opened out. No sound

but a black chuckle

as fingers turn the limp page.

Memory tracks its fragments, its thousand winds,

shoals and creeks, collapsed shacks

a white gap, mudflats—web over web

lace-ball in brain’s meridian.

This paper’s no map, what are its lines

as flashlight conjures a code

from a page of light, a spider’s a total blank?

So he steers upstream now

away from map-reason, no direction to take

but hands and boat to the place

where he will kill prawns, mesh and scoop3

in creek and bay and take

his bait kicking green out from this translucent

morning.

Flint & Steel shines

behind him, light comes in from everywhere,

prawns are peeled alive.

Set rods, tips curve along tide, the prawns howl

into the breeze, marking the page.

He’s alone as he does this kind of work—

his face hardened in sun, hands

moving in and out of water and his life.4

My House

My mother lives in a house

where nobody has ever died

she surrounds herself

and her family with light

each time I go home

I feel she is washing

and ironing the clothes of death

these clothes for work

and for going out

to the Club on Sunday

and for Jenny to take her baby

to the doctor in

death comes on the television

and Mum laughs

saying there’s death again

I must get those jeans taken up5

My Granny

When my granny was dying

I’d go into her bedroom

and look at her

she’d tell me to get out of it

leave this foul river

it will wear you out too

she was very sick

and her red curly hair

was matted and smelt of gin

sometimes I sat there all day

listening to the races

and put bets on for her at the shop

and I sat there the afternoon

she died and heard her say her last words

I sat there not telling

maybe three hours

beside the first dead person I’d seen

I tried to drink some of her gin

it made me throw up on the bed

then I left her

she said the prawns will eat you

when you die on the Hawkesbury River6

My Tenth Birthday

We went to Pumpkin Point

for my tenth birthday

the best picnic beach on the river

the mud is thinner

and doesn’t smell as off

and there is a swing

made from a huge truck tyre

I wore my first jeans

and got a cane rod and a bird book

Dad washed the rabbit blood

out of the back of his truck

and we spread blankets

and pillows over the splinters

A storm came up after lunch

and I cut my foot open

on a sardine can as I ran into a cave

it was the same cave

I found again four years later

on a night my father set out the nets

and slept beside me

for the only time in his life7

The Harbour Bridge

I went with Dad on the sulky

into town across the Harbour Bridge

it was a windy cold day

I wasn’t too keen on going

along in a horse and cart in the city

I slid down under the seat

so the horse’s tail swished in my face

we passed trams and women

standing at the crossings

and Dad just driving through it all

as if he was still up the river

his hat on his head

and his son beside him

with the city grit getting on me

the shopping growing in the back

beans and tomato trees

the blood and bone spilling behind us8

My Fishing Boat

Mum and Dad are at it again

in the room

next to mine

their terrible sobbing

comes through the damp wall

they fight about something

I have done

I get out of bed

and go down the yard to the river

push my boat out into

the black and freezing bay

under the mangroves

that smell like human shit

I move along my secret channel

my hands blistered

from rowing slip with blood

around the cove I tie up on a mangrove

it rains harder

all I catch are catfish here

and have them sliding

about in the belly of the boat

they are the ugliest-looking things

in the world 9

My First Proper Girlfriend

The first girl I wanted to marry

was Joan Hunter

her father owned more oyster leases

than anyone else on the river

she had buck teeth

but she looked okay really

we’d sit on her father’s wharf

and watch the mullet together for hours

they will take over the world one day

we loved each other alright

my parents hated us being together

and called her Bugs Bunny

One night my father cut Joan’s dad

with a fishing knife

right down his left cheek

that little Protestant bludger

with his stuck-up bitch of a daughter 10

Growing up Alone

I

Walking down our backyard

scraping my legs on blackberries

at the steps I pull on the ropes

holding up the old twine

gill-net used for

trapping starlings now

they hit it

then flap out

until they strangle themselves

the same as mullet

I tear out the birds at eye level

ripping the weak mesh

and throw the bodies onto the compost

its heap spreading down

to the tide-line

putrescence curling out

from the warm centre where blowflies

cluster in the thick of it

2

Me and Sandy would go

out onto the mudflats at low tide

catching soldier crabs 11

we’d talk about what would happen

if she ever got pregnant to me

because we were first cousins

our baby would have

one of those big heads

and maybe no hand or something

3

Sandy was pretty ugly too

blotched freckles on her screwed-up face

skinny legs and no tits

good hair though

curly and real yellow

she always had cold sores on her lips

that tasted salty

4

At midday I’d walk to the Point

and there’d be nobody

I’d look at the starlings

the only things that could take it

hard birds that shine 12

eating anything just about

one day I watched them get through a cat

that’d been run over

it took them a morning

5

Sandy knew a place at Cheero Point

where we’d go behind a tree

and stare into the eyes of God

they were in the face

of an old yellow cat who’d gone mad

once we looked we wouldn’t be able to move

sitting there for hours sometimes

before it let us go

6

The backyard to our grandfather’s

was the Hawkesbury River

and me and Sandy hated it

It meant all the kids at Gosford

knew how poor we were

because only fishermen lived there

and we hated it because

when you went out on it at night

the dark was frightening

and the ground was full of ants 13

the river with its savage tides

that would wear you out in half an hour

and in summer the heat

and sun burning into your neck

giving you awful headaches

and nothing to do but fish or hide

7

I’d been crying under the house

I ran out onto the road

into the same dust and heat again

with the lousy starlings

the dark sheen on their wings

oily metallic green

I thought about the way we die

the steps just falling away

from under me as I ran

the heads of jewfish

nailed out along the wharf rail

two hundred and seven

some skulls and others still flesh

all with their eyes eaten out 14

8

I had this game it was all different

the papershop wasn’t neat

and the pub didn’t smell so rotten

I’d sit in Dad’s truck and look out

at the town’s light

a clear steady light

nothing like