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pdf download - Westerly Magazine

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from which she herself had sprung. The poemconcludes with a call toRemember Thunderbolt, buried under theair-raid trenches.Remember the bearded men singing of exile.Remember the shepherds under their strangestars.That this call for remembrance is, for her,very personal is shown in many places andnowhere better than in "South of my Days"which begins:South of my days' circle, part of my blood'scountry,rises the tableland, high delicate outlineof bony slopes wincing under the winter,low trees blue-leaved and olive, outcroppinggranite—clean, lean, hungry country ....and ends:South of my days' circleI know it against the stars, the high leancountryfull of old stories that still go walking in mysleep.If there has been despoilment, this seems toimply, then we are all touched with some guiltand out of the original hate-love relationshipbetween our forebears and this alien earth hascome the fulfilment of love.Her poem, "BuUocky", expressed in a balladlikeform she was not often to use again, becameat once a favourite anthology piece. Thefirst three stanzas suffice to show its mood:Beside his heavy-shouldered team,thirsty with drought and chilled with rain,he weathered all the striding yearstill they ran widdershins in his brain:Till the long solitary tracksetched deeper with each lurching loadwere populous before his eyes,and fiends and angels used his road.All the long straining journey grewa mad apocalyptic dream,and he old Moses, and the slaveshis suffering and stubborn team.This is landscape poetry, but it is a landscapewith people. In "South of my Days" there wasold Dan:Seventy years of stories he clutches roundhis bones.Seventy summers are hived in him like oldhoney.In "Brother and Sisters" there are Millie, Lucyand John struggling against time and lack offulfilment on a no-good farm:The road turned out to be a cul-de-sac;stopped like a lost intention at the gateand never crossed the mountains to thecoast.But they stayed on."Half-caste Girl" is pure Jindyworobak, butwritten with much deeper insight:Little Josie buried under the bright moonis tired of being dead, death lasts too long.She would like to push death aside, andstand on the hilland beat with a waddy on the bright moonlike a gong.Across the hills, the hills that belong to nopeopleand so to none are foreign,once she climbed high to find the nativecherry;the lithe darkhearted lubrawho in her beads like blooddressed delicately for lovemoves her long hands among the strings ofthe wind,singing the songs of women,the songs of love and dying.Most of the poetry in The Moving Image isessentially regional; its appeal could be largelyto those who, however vicariously, have sharedthe emotions which regionalism of any sortcalls up. We are reminded of her words in theJindyworobak review: "The regional, thenational outlook has a value, and no doubtsome writers do their best work within such aclosed circuit. But there are other jobs to do.""Judith Wright worked magnificently withinthat closed circuit, but did not confine herselfto it. Even in this early volume "The Companyof Lovers" entirely forsakes regionalism.It does, however, remain a poem of its time,the time of a world at war:We meet and part now over all the world:we, the lost company,take hands together in the night, forgetthe night in our brief happiness, silently.We, who sought many things, throw allawayfor this one thing, one only,remembering that in the narrow gravewe shall be lonely.Death marshals up his armies round usnow.Their footsteps crowd too near.WESTERLY, No. 1, MARCH, 1968 45

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