pdf download - Westerly Magazine
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WONG PHUI NAMCousinI had to call to you twicebefore you started; reachinto white haze to touch you,already sunk, quiescentin the morning effects of your medicines.Alone at your table . . . . In the quietof the coffee shop it had becomethe familiar dim rock from which,after each harsh night of discomfortand sweat, you slippedinto the obscure pressand flow of the body's processesto drift, unmindful, in dissolution.'Oh, it's you ... .' Awakened,you had much of the caged, discoloured owlabout you, hurting in daylight.'I cannot see as muchas I used to in those days . . . .'It was as if I had come upon youdisinterred from the weight of the few past months.All colour had been drawnfrom face, from thinned out hair,powdery at the roots;and from the voice, that ready anger.I could not help but sensemuch that had been that fed the hearthad now been leached from you.'Where are you attached to now?'Within, damp ash gathering,was now making its W'irj outward to the skin.12WESTERLY, No.2, JUNE, 1989
You had kept to yourself too longthat dull knot in the guttill it became engorgedand had, with its tightening hold upon you,with large affected sections, to be excised.Even if it had been the LordGod himself that had his hands in . . . .you were too much closed off by your pain,revulsion at prune-like changeand easy befouling of unhealing fleshto cope . . . . Closed off in tissue and in bonefrom all access, each day, you said,you sensed your end to be more fearful -taking you whole up to chest and face,tight, airless, like newly tamped-down earth.Outside, the growing heat of morningbeat back for a whilethat encroaching ring of darknesswhich, behind the eye,was caught up in its own fierce winds.Intending little else than body's ease,how would you,when the haze thickened, be set? -so as not to face the wrong wayand make toward the heart, the originof such thick banks of dustthrown up so high, so blackas to make all light clot -even thatwhich streamed from the clearest, the most effulgent sun.I left you with your unbuttered breakfast toast,your watery Milkmaid milk,having agreed your doctors might well sayit was nothing that was moredangerous than stomach ulcer after all.WESTERLY, No.2, JUNE, 1989 13
- Page 3 and 4: CONTENTSWESTERLYVOLUME 34, No.2, JU
- Page 5: WESTERLYa quarterly reviewISSN 0043
- Page 8 and 9: JAN KEMPTo My Father, M.H.K.My fath
- Page 10 and 11: JAN KEMPThe GypsySuddenly before yo
- Page 12 and 13: WONG PHUI NAMA Death in the WardThe
- Page 16 and 17: WONG PHUI NAMObitIt is as thin smok
- Page 18 and 19: So thus I lie here fearful of movem
- Page 20 and 21: VIRGINIA BERNARDA ValedictionWhen N
- Page 22 and 23: "Yeah, yeah," I call, returning the
- Page 24 and 25: she flops for a bit, slurps her tea
- Page 26 and 27: well her students did, she was neve
- Page 28 and 29: English or Indian, that they had th
- Page 30 and 31: ANDREW TAYLORSpringSpring is a dive
- Page 32 and 33: CAROL SElTZERAiming for the MouthTr
- Page 34 and 35: GRAEME WILSONA Selection of Japanes
- Page 36 and 37: a highly ambivalent attitude to his
- Page 38 and 39: Esson attended some rehearsals of T
- Page 40 and 41: the literary life of Bloomsbury. Lo
- Page 42 and 43: Without Yeats Esson would quite lik
- Page 44 and 45: "What theatre do you have in Austra
- Page 46 and 47: In the back room Esson could feel t
- Page 48 and 49: "When we started our little theatre
- Page 50 and 51: a screen against a wall. A theatre
- Page 52 and 53: VINCENT O'SULLIVANSinging Mastery:
- Page 54 and 55: flighty relation in most statements
- Page 56 and 57: living and the dead; that places hi
- Page 58 and 59: quite diverse traditions towards th
- Page 60 and 61: WARRICK WYNNEThe Wetlands (for Liam
- Page 62 and 63: JAN OWENSmileOur mother aimed the b
WONG PHUI NAMCousinI had to call to you twicebefore you started; reachinto white haze to touch you,already sunk, quiescentin the morning effects of your medicines.Alone at your table . . . . In the quietof the coffee shop it had becomethe familiar dim rock from which,after each harsh night of discomfortand sweat, you slippedinto the obscure pressand flow of the body's processesto drift, unmindful, in dissolution.'Oh, it's you ... .' Awakened,you had much of the caged, discoloured owlabout you, hurting in daylight.'I cannot see as muchas I used to in those days . . . .'It was as if I had come upon youdisinterred from the weight of the few past months.All colour had been drawnfrom face, from thinned out hair,powdery at the roots;and from the voice, that ready anger.I could not help but sensemuch that had been that fed the hearthad now been leached from you.'Where are you attached to now?'Within, damp ash gathering,was now making its W'irj outward to the skin.12WESTERLY, No.2, JUNE, 1989
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