Classic Poem

I

Winds are bleak, stars are bright,
Loads lumber along the night:
Looming, ghastly white,
A towering truck of cauliflowers sways
Out of the dark, roped over and packed tight
Like faces of a crowd of football jays.

The roads come in, roads dark and long,
To the knock of hubs and a sleepy song.
Heidelberg, Point Nepean, White Horse,
Flemington, Keilor, Dandenong,
Into the centre from the source.

Rocking in their seats
The worn-out drivers droop
When dawn stirs in the streets
And the moon's a silver hoop;
Come rumbling into the silent mart,
To put their treasure at its heart,
Waggons, lorries, a lame Ford bus,
Like ants along the arms of an octopus
Whose body is all one mouth; that pays them hard
And drives them back with less than a slave's reward.

When Batman first at Heaven's command
Said, " This is the place for a peanut-stand",
It must have been grand!

II

" Cheap today, lady; cheap today!"
Jostling water-melons roll
From fountains of Earth's mothering soul.
Tumbling from box and tray
Rosy, cascading apples play
Each with a glowing aureole
Caught from a split sun-ray.
" Cheap today, lady, cheap today."
Hook the carcases from the dray!
(Where the dun bees hunt in droves
Apples ripen in the groves.)

An old horse broods in a Chinaman's cart
While from the throbbing mart
Go cheese and celery, pears and jam
In barrow, basket, bag, or pram
To the last dram the purse affords —
Food, food for the hordes!

Shuffling in the driven crush
The souls and the bodies cry,
Rich and poor, skimped and flush,
" Spend or perish, buy or die!"

Food, food for the hordes!
The Turksheads tumble on the boards.

There's honey at the dairy produce stall
Where the strung saveloys festooning fall;
Yielding and yellow, the beautiful butter blocks
Confront the poultryman's plucked Plymouth Rocks.

The butcher is gladly selling,
Chopping and slaughtering, madly yelling.
A bull-like bellow for captured sales,
A great crowd surges around his scales.
Slap down the joint.
The finger point
Wobbles and comes alive,
Springs round to twenty and back to five.
To him Creation's total aim
Is selling chops to a doubting dame.
And what will matter his steaks and joints,
The underdone and the overdone,
On the day when old Earth jumps the points
And swings into the sun?

Along the shadows, furtive, lone,
The unwashed terrier carries his week-end bone,
An old horse with a pointed hip
And dangling disillusioned under-lip
Stands in a harvest-home of cabbage-leaves
And grieves.
A lady by a petrol case,
With a far-off wounded look in her face
Says, in a voice of uncertain pitch,
" Muffins", or " crumpets", I'm not sure which.
A pavement battler whines with half a sob,
" Ain't any body got a bloody bob?"
Haunted by mortgages and overdrafts
The old horse droops between the shafts.
A smiling Chinaman upends a bag
And spills upon the bench with thunder-thud
(A nearby urchin trilling the newest rag)
Potatoes caked with loamy native mud.

Andean pinnacles of labelled jam.
The melting succulence of two-toothed lamb.
The little bands of hemp that truss
The succulent asparagus
That stands like tiny sheaves of purple wheat
Ready to eat.
Huge and alluring hams and rashered swine
In circular repetitive design.
Gobbling turkeys and ducks in crates,
Pups in baskets and trays of eggs;
A birdman turns and gloomily relates
His woes to a girl with impossible legs.

When Batman first at Heaven's command
Stuck flag-staffs in this sacred strand . . .
We'll leave all that to the local band.

IV

Shuffling in the driven tide
The huddled people press,
Hoarding and gloating, having defied
Hunger, cold and nakedness
For a few days more — or less.
Is it nothing to you that pass?
Will you not pity their need?
Store beef fattens on stolen grass,
Brows grow dark with covetous greed,
Storm or manacle, cringe or pray,
There is no way but the money way.

Pouring suns, pouring heavens, pouring earth,
And the life-giving seas!
Treasure eternally flowing forth,
None greater than these!
Richness, colour and form,
Ripe flavours and juices rare!

Within men's hearts rises a deathless prayer
Deep as a spirit storm,
Giving thanks that the earth has offered such
(So grateful to the eye, so rich to touch)
Miraculous varieties of fare.

And yet that lamb with the gentle eye,
She had to die.
There have been foolish dreams
Of fishes pulled from reedy streams,
Of delicate earthly fruits
Being torn up by the roots —
But only the Mandragora screams.

Gentle curates and slaughtermen
Murder the cattle in the pen:
Body, Spirit, the Word, the Breath
Only survive by so much death.
The old horse with the pointed hip
And disillusioned under-lip
Stands in a drift of cabbage-leaves
And grieves.