Ex Nihilo
03 September 2017
WARDLEY BARRY
Upon the epitaph a candle burns,
beneath the grave a centurion turns;
on the portals of immortality
he savours a fling with depravity.
Across the wooden fence a mongrel howls
as through the cemetery a ghoul prowls.
A gush of wind laboured through the crosses,
a field of white, like abandoned churches,
each of which are placed to honour the dead;
the people we love, the past-times we dread,
and the prisons to which we enfetter
our consciousness. The myths we treasure
so that we can see candles on the grave,
and marvel at the strange way they behave;
so we can sense the stirs of our comrades
when the moon casts down its silver cascade
over the place where we bury our dreams,
where we fear above all else our own screams.
There we must howl at the moon, mortal fools.
If it howls back not we must be like ghouls,
mining through forbidden dirt and sacred
silence, for gems of hope among the dead.
And what we discover in the boneyard
must now be deified in the churchyard,
what we forfeit at the cemetery,
we must fashion in the monastery.
Oh, hail Buddha for the enlightenment!
The candle that he burned was no figment.
And thanks to Dawkins for the delusion.
He brought a candle home for no reason.
It's a crazy world we are living in.
What is not without, we beget within.
The moral of Ern Malley: if you're good, don't fake being bad because you might become famous for it.
That doesn't sound so bad.
__________
It's worth noting here that James McAuley and Harold Stewart, who perpetrated the hoax in 1944, were both officers in the Army Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs which, not long after, was to become the Australian School of Pacific Administration, ASOPA - KJ
Posted by: Michael Dom | 05 September 2017 at 09:52 AM
You guys should read up on the Ern Malley affair in Australia.
A couple of writers pulled chunks of text out of books and other sources like army manuals and advertisements, arranged them in poetic form and sent them off to a literary magazine which raved about them.
Check out Max Harris, he was the poor dupe in the whole affair.
Posted by: Philip Fitzpatrick | 05 September 2017 at 08:44 AM
I reckon poetry should be a subliminal art as well, a tad cryptic I might say. That's what makes it interesting.
Posted by: Wardley Barry | 05 September 2017 at 07:59 AM
I'm sure this poem has some hidden meaning but it is beyond me. Something about death surely or rather of mortality our faith or belief in the afterlife.
"what we forfeit at the cemetery,
we must fashion in the monastery."
Intriguing and some pretty highbrow English.
Posted by: Michael Dom | 03 September 2017 at 10:53 PM