Australia, (1933-2017)
Gall Tripartite
- I Cold Ham for Sigmund
- Heriger, bishop of Mainz, saw a prophet who said he had been carried off to hell. Among other details, he revealed that hell was surrounded by dense woods. To this, bishop Heriger replied with laughter: “In that case I’ll send my swineherd to that grazing ground and get him to take my thin pigs with him.”
— From the MS. of St. Augustine - The clever cleric knows the rules,
- A recognized authority
- On all the grids and cul-de-sacs
- Of limbo, hell and purgatory.
- Good citizens of Mainz rejoice
- That Heriger is in the chair!
- If what you thought was hell today
- He’ll let you know it wasn’t there
- Tomorrow. Arch-rotarian, he will
- Send his cheerful pigs to make
- Reconnaissance, investigate
- Infernal sprawl, pronounce it fake.
- So keep it underneath your hat
- If demons seize you by the hair,
- For Mainz prefers its porkers fat
- And heavenly fodder’s everywhere.
- II Look here, Vladimir…
- You! European you, with the
- Pained fastidious bones,
- Take off your exclusive cross and hush
- Your cheery omniscient groans.
- What makes you suppose yourself to
- Be so final an authority
- On the stink of suffering’s rose?
- Do I have to wave an Auschwitz stump
- To attest my fitness, pour
- Mieux comprendre the
- Pacific equine rump
- Of Bosch, the wart
- On the conjurer’s nose?
- III Plus Ça Change…
- Old Henry commiserates with Hedda,
- (A rusted pistol rattles to the floor)
- Manipulates as beautifully as ever
- Seraphic permit to terrestrial door.
- Both find that they have in them to agree
- Upon the source of their infirmity.
- The screw turns aimlessly into the silt,
- Hélas, it only pricks a barren spring;
- The coupled squeak with boredom from the quilt
- Mechanically doing their own thing.
- Observing simple pleasures never cloy,
- Our pair retrieve their winding sheets with joy.
Paperbacks
- Snagged between Fretwork for Beginners and
- 1000 Hints for Handymen, the Poetry.
- Discriminating, idle for a day
- I attend the Contents, soothing page — no one
- I know, no one my age. Strangers sorted,
- Focused by sex, View of a Pig — clearly a
- Man. Helen’s Rape — what else but?
- Never woman’s heroine (‘She always had it
- Coming to her,’ said the aunts of
- Menelaus, ‘No pride, that’s her trouble.’)
- Requiem for Plantagenet Kings? Who but a
- Male would so squirm? Female madness
- Assumes more desperate form.
- Titles plead literacy: (‘I contemplate’, ‘I count
- For something’, ‘So you think you can scan’,
- ‘Not for nothing did I read Classics, major
- In History’ they shout at me.
- But Bedtime Story for my Son, Childless
- Woman, The Abortion, Her Kind, throw me
- A minute. As in most affairs of the heart a
- Moral smoulders in it.
- One must confess, despite
- Contrary medical evidence (a Johns Hopkins
- Psychologist no less) to a difference,
- No matter the thousand mature female
- Rats caged with the newborn; who needs
- A rat? Menstruation, gestation, lactation
- Haven’t the dash of impregnation, but
- Culturally determined? Optional?
- Poets tell more than most,
- Inflate the heart or pulp it.
- Men order such things; women just can’t help it.
- Enough never enough, the whole hog rendered from
- Birth to conception to birth. Man diverts with
- Nicely weighed perception, unseemly
- (Or so women seem to think) mirth.
- Small wonder that men then
- Like women, envy them even, dimly recalling roosting
- Long into the night, high in a star-pricked heaven,
- Powerless to write.
About the Poet:
Fay Zwicky (born: Julia Fay Rosefield), Australia, (1933-2017), was a poet, short story author, reviewer, anthology editor, essayist and an accomplished concert pianist. She was also a lecturer in American and Comparative Literature at the University of Western Australia from 1972 until her retirement in 1987.
Zwicky’s first collection of poems, Isaac Babel’s Fiddle, was published in 1975. She has since published another seven poetry collections, mostly since her retirement from the university.
In 2005 Zwicky won both the Patrick White Award and the FAW Christopher Brennan Award. In 2004 she was declared one of the Western Australian State’s Living Treasures. Zwicky’s poems explore gender, the Jewish faith, and the use and misuse of political power and about the patriarchal silencing of the voices and experiences of women. [DES-04/18]