A poem of place and politics |
There is snow on Adamson’s Peak In the high country of the south west it is still most assuredly winter. Yet as my eyes come home to Randall’s Bay the paddocks sing of spring. If I close my eyes to eucalypts and my ears to the calls of parrots it could be England in April. The trees protecting the pastel-painted farm house could be a clump of sacred yews or holy oaks. Even as the eucalypts proclaim Australia the sheep are too white and the lambs too fragile. The grass is dressed in that fleeting hue which is ‘forever England’ before it braces itself for antipodean heat. On the Bay there are the early signs of summer – The white sails of the long weekend and children excitedly searching rock pools. Across the Channel South Bruny begins to aestivate in the blue remembered haze. This is Tasmania, of the perplexing paradox where green is greener than anywhere else on Earth but many in Hobart Town are colour blind, mesmerized by the lie of perpetual progress, the deadening heart of Enlightenment darkness. Here at Randall’s Bay there speaks A greater truth beyond the paradox. Here can dwell souls of a different temperament -. those who know a new enlightenment that sings to them a fresh song. They know that only in the balance of English vernality and eucalypt laden haze, in sheep too white and parrots too bright, in infinite Gods and daily mortalities there can be a new land of hope and haven. |