Poetry
THE DREAM
One winter night two travellers met on the Harbour Bridge
The visionary said
...blind to the figure atop the pole...
"I dreamt a tsunami fell upon Sydney
Angels of God carted me over the swollen waters
I was hard work
sagging flesh above the maelstrom
spared from death for no good reason
they dropped me on a northern hill
Where chilled, I stared at the south's horizon
to the city's oblongs standing grim
Too far to witness the first floor victims
the titbits tossed in boiling foam
Beside me two addicts sat cross-legged
on sodden grass, rocking head to head
I'd seen this pair before
in the streets, on the beaches
but never warned them
too late now.
I could not speak one truth to free them
to pierce their fevered mantras
trying to drown the flood and me."
Arms hooked into the nearest girder the Professor scoffed:
"Flagellant - stop!
You're hearing your own voices, painting your own scenes,
creating cardboard cut-outs of hippies and heavenly beings.
The facts are harsher
Sydney will ascend in gas and cinder
by the scourge of war, the combustion of fuel..."
"By nature or science," the Seer conceded
"by water or fire, this bridge will fall
this harbour meld with the waiting sea."
On twelve September they came at dawn
and perched on the prow of a Manly ferry
scanty humans in ignorance of a winged creature listening
"Label not," cried the Seer, legs a-swinging
"Christ and Muhammad, Bush and Bin Laden
judge man in his cradle, judge you and me."
...The herald on the opera house polished his trumpet...
The professor irrupted: "Don't preach the rot of Cain and Abel
talk to your mirror, or if God exists, Him"
...and spread his wings...
"Because when it comes to this
when I must kill a stranger
who neither struck my child nor burnt my land
then the fault lies in power, in government - understand?"
...and flew to North Head...
Wisdom sighed.
"Sin mongers share in the common guilt but see something real you won't admit,
that lessons in self-esteem are as violent as rhetoric and bombs."
"I teach Reason!"
"Which tames the mind, my friend - but where does hatred start?
In here, let me tell you, in the heart.
Donne was right about the bell and feeling safe in the South Tower was wrong."
For once they shouted in unison:
"Both towers housed everyone! New York to Afghanistan!"
In the orange dust of bush-fire December
on the day remembering Jesus' birth, timidity struck
"What about us?"
His raiment pink from the bloodied sun the trumpeter replied:
"O Scholar and Sage, do you not hear the rumbling,
the jellying on axis, of this earth?"
© S E Crawford 2003