Study the leaves of the Brachychiton
And you will be ready for any turn in the conversation

What holds true in a grove of Brachychitons
Holds true in wheatfields and oaks

The kind of thought that I aspire to
Would not disturb one leaf of Brachychiton

I am not self-conscious in the Brachychiton
Some are afraid in the Brachychiton
Brachychiton Brachychiton
Enter the Brachychitons

After a while my thoughts fly
When I chant "The Brachychiton"
They sit down and most move around in the Brachychitons
I thought my jeans were Brachychitons
Nirvana Brachychiton. Brachychiton Das Cyclamens.
It is different each time in the Brachychitons

I am draining the swamps of Asia

I am draining the swamps of Asia
Finding the joints of bronzed plough shares
And the opened valves of mussel shells jutting through the mud.
Today I found a beetle with a bright green rim
Branches in squares and rectangles
A sunken cod, a British camera, a table cloth and some decayed black
               sacking.
I made a temple from the things I had gathered
Stacked in horizontals like a jacaranda
And directed a ladybird into worship
And from my deck chair I prayed myself:
For the flecked and dreg-like soil
For the reeds and the black green manure
For the sticky spider webs, barley sugar in colour
For worm tracks
And for a weathered crow feather which had lost its gloss.

What puts the finishing touches to my sleep?

What puts the finishing touches to my sleep?
The Blue Swift. The non-Euclidean eucalypt.

What's in a name?
Sailcloth and literary allusions.

What's rich and famous and has grubs in the stem?
The slave traffic on the window-pane.

When is blue metal almost blue?
When it's so blue, it's on the point of bloom.

the laugh of the kookaburra is sensed as the outermost gust of a
laugh that is very deep
heaven and earth split further asunder

from the day of the first separation

heaven drew off higher, the land grew thicker, more dense

this is a land of deepened earth presence

Kosciusko, Uluru, the grinding stone, the waterhole, rocks worn
similarly smooth and dented

all forms further composed under the vast dome

a congregation of stones, mountains
a congregation of mountains, stones

the reclining kangaroo, the marsupial folds of the hills

mountains huddled, recumbent, set

a prolonged splitting of heaven and earth devising the attenuated
and open structure of the gum

throughout the flora devising the further distortion of leaves, the
further skew and spacing of the leaf shapes' mandala, skew and
elaboration of its clubs, hearts, diamonds, spades

a twist through the leaves and shared rumination between all things

a hoary whisper

that affinity between tree, reptile, kookaburra

and ruffian regard that is the wink of the country's inner geology

the shaggy eye that looks back from banksia and hakea

the eye of the emu, the eye of the goanna, eye of the stone curlew,
the tawny frogmouth, the eye of the snake

a land of reptiles, earth gliding forms

and the platypus, echidna, bird species more closely derived from
these

the slack reptilian folds in the trunks of the lemon scented gums

a match in the markings of stone curlew and ghost moth

in the tassels of emu and she-oak, lyrebird plumes and fern fronds,
forms of parrot and gumleaf

the rockshelf acknowledging its surroundings, lines of plateau
escarpments, and the smooth slab of the continent edged by the
long cliff of the Bight

each pattern of lizard and snake, each banksia leaf cutout, each
scribble on the tree trunk a subtle dictation, an inner and over-
painting of the whole mind, the whole country

the white face of the heron
clay daubed on with a frayed stick

forms held until now in some even counter-sway in the dance of the
atoms around the earth
in an eddy of ocean and moonlight on heaven's floor

Quiet ruin is the conversation of the bulbs
Then axeman builds as rustman stalks them
An apple seeming to the wasteful falls
The old watertight roads have sandbars along their edge

Then axeman builds as rustman stalks them
For different reasons there might be things that curl up and things
       that last
The old watertight roads have sandbars along their edge
The one melon ripes away in many ways

For different reasons there might be things that curl up and things
       that last
So great, so flattery, so sand
The one melon ripes away in many ways
I'm looking for a reason to be born amongst the stars

So great, so flattery, so sand
I believe in life after death because things always are, they always
       extend
I'm looking for a reason to be born amongst the stars
The everywhere the moon always was and rests

I believe in life after death because things always are, they always
       extend
An apple seeming to the wasteful falls
The everywhere the moon always was and rests
Quiet ruin is the conversation of the bulbs

The World Cannot be Overcome by the Analogue "I"

The world cannot be overcome by the analogue "I"
The choice of a subject like the choice of a glance
At the height of what is said, waterfall
A truth veiled - as in its veiled effects

The choice of a subject like the choice of a glance
Creating an epi space where the legend itself, Art, can be freely
              thrown about
A truth veiled - as in its veiled effects
What are we looking for? nameless objects with paths

Creating an epi space where the legend itself, Art, can be freely
              thrown about
The cloud front that passes the brow of the talk
What are we looking for? nameless objects with paths
A limber spot in the limber lost

The cloud front that passes the brow of the talk
Tearing off the cardboard and singing to the crockery
A limber spot in the limberlost
Mud is a writer - lightning is a writer

Tearing off the cardboard and singing to the crockery
At the height of what is said, waterfall
Mud is a writer - lightning is a writer
The world cannot be overcome by the analogue "I"

Maintain the Ruins of the Previous Restoration

Maintain the ruins of the previous restoration
Don't alter, but preserve it in its sweet sleep, its inventive mind
The mistakes give the work of art ventilation
Like me to sign you? asked the ghosts of the past

Don't alter, but preserve it in its sweet sleep, its inventive mind
Is there a prisoner access to this sort of truth?
Like me to sign you? asked the ghosts of the past
By our histories we are appropriated

Is there a prisoner access to this sort of truth?
It is an impossible question, Don Juan let go of it only to interfere
               all the time
By our histories we are appropriated
The winds jam our task like a foster century

It is an impossible question, Don Juan let go of it only to interfere
               all the time
Sometimes the narrator plods his heels in a puddle, why must he
               do this, why must he seek?
The winds jam our task like a foster century
When a thoroughfare requires years of broken bumblebees

Sometimes the narrator plods his heels in a puddle, why must he
               do this, why must he seek?
The mistakes give the work of art ventilation
When a thoroughfare requires years of broken bumblebees
Maintain the ruins of the previous restoration

Abstract

The book will be a carefully organised mosaic of pieces.
The perspective will be constantly changing.
Faint perceptions, apprehensions, underlying patterns of events, will be clustered
into their own archipelagoes, brought just to the surface of visibility.
There will be a critical combination of effects, carefully paced and staged.
I see the text as a painting of this land.
I see the cover as the first page of the text.
The choosing of the image will be a particularly delicate matter.
It will be a window into the writing.
The image will rise from the same vision, as though the text were seeping through
and saturating the jacket.
My line will be there.
Each page will study itself.
One page will study another and so gain hermetic definition.
I'd like the title to breathe too.
To resonate with the depth and distance, the quietness of the image.
I will paint a forest set out like the night.

I saw how they laboured - their tremendous sadness

I saw how they laboured - their tremendous sadness

waves are like the paws of a cat trying to climb up the wall, the earth,
but they keep slipping back

as if the sea itself were drowning