As I Walked Out One Evening

*

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

'I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

'The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

'In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

'In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.

'Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.

'O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.

'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.

'O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

'O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.


As I Walked Out One Evening
by W. H. Auden

He felt as if he had been permanently deleted. With each tooth went swathes of memory. Catastrophe was always imminent. But in reality he had got up and gone to work for years. Swathes of memory, festooned with the dead. Shadows of the population. A relentless ground. Yesterday he had to move his car three times to avoid the ever present parking police; those pestulant forces preying on a defeated, disarmed population. If it's not a word it should be; the vile evil that this city had become. No one was happy any more, except the young and the frivolous. The appalling hierarchy. The hole into which he had fallen. The gifts of the gods. The sacred arch; in this world nothing but the plastic yellow arches of MacDonalds.

All the way, all the way, he shivered, he remembered their love, you are my north, my south, my east, my west, my Monday morning and my Sunday rest, infatuation. Now he was too old for the ones he fancied; and jerked like an ancient puppet on the periphery of social scenes; eclipsed. We really love you, he said, and in the depth of it he wondered what had happened to all those past images, those self beliefs, the ancient, appallingly sick fishman blinking in and out of reality, hid artfully behind the seven screens, flailing at himself with syringes, so desperately sick, so totally hidden.

We went to see Rachel Getting Married, Joyce and I, about a woman - Anne Hathaway - on weekend release from a rehab in order to attend a wedding; all the family intensities. We thought it was a comedy but it was closer to a tragedy, intense, draining, the utter selfishness of the addict. She seems to be getting worse, he said to the kids, when one of them referred to their own mother as a psycho. Yes, they nodded. That scene last night, he said, referring to a tear filled lounge room spurt when the complex rave, I couldn't possibly go to work, you get that don't you? spilled over on to the floor and made little sense at all.

It had been such a long struggle; and now it was virtually over. Sammy turned 18 two days ago. The catastrophic burdens that he had carried with him; they too had been blasted away. Let it go, Mick had said, holding his hand, promise me, let it go. And he wouldn't let his hand go until he repeated after him: Yes, I promise, I will let it go. This burden, these pains. You've been self-medicating all these years, the psychiatrist said. It all came together in that strangely therapeutic moment, that peculiar, unique singularity. Let it go. Repeat after me.

All his life the right people had shown up at the right time; and here it was again. He was in shadows. He was fighting for his life. And then suddenly the sunny up lands - here you go then, the wind and the music and a friend and I, leaving from very strange stations of the cross, from the uncharted uplands of the spirit. But quoting, inaccurately, long dead poets, in this case Michael Dransfield, dead, young, the tragic poet, the person he thought he was going to be, short, brilliant, doomed, would get you nowhere. This was an entirely different era.

A curmudgeonly old thing, the world was doomed. They wrapped their loins in preparation for the coming depression. Shocked faces of normally bland, lying politicians, gave away the real story. Suited officials from the Reserve Bank assured the populace that Australia would not be hit as badly as the rest of the world. A dark alloy formed at the base. The Coalition disintegrated. Shocked passages passed them by. The x-ray trees on burnt ground retreated into memory. The death toll was revised, closer to 200 than the 300 originally feared; still Australia's worst natural disaster. The howling wind; the cars that spontaneously burst into flames ahead of the fireball, the houses that disintegrated; and now, the survivors, thousands of homes lost; turning on the media; just leave us alone.

Their suffering had been thoroughly exploited; and it was time to leave the stage.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.theage.com.au/national/fire-accused-a-target-over-facebook-photo-lawyer-20090217-8aa2.html

ACCUSED arsonist Brendan James Sokaluk has become a focal point of community anger, his lawyer told a court yesterday, as Premier John Brumby appealed for calm.

Lawyer Julian McMahon told the Supreme Court he was concerned for Sokaluk's safety after his photograph and "vicious" comments, including calls for him to be tortured and killed, were posted on social networking website Facebook.

Sokaluk, 39, of Churchill, is accused of lighting a fire in his town that killed at least 11 people.

Magistrate Jonathon Klestadt lifted a suppression order on his name on Monday, when Sokaluk was charged with arson causing death, arson and possessing child pornography.

Mr Klestadt said it was unlikely that people in the close-knit community did not already know who he was, but suppressed Sokaluk's street address and image in a bid to prevent vandalism or violence.

Thousands of Facebook vigilantes defied the ban by publishing his photo and address, accompanied by violent threats.

Mr McMahon, who appeared for Sokaluk during a Supreme Court bid by the Herald Sun to lift the ban on publishing his image, said at least one threat had also been made against one of Sokaluk's relatives.

The "vicious" material about his client on the internet meant community anger suddenly had a focus, Mr McMahon said.

The mother of a woman previously linked to Sokaluk and whose photograph was published in the Herald Sun , released a statement through police saying she feared that her daughter's job and community standing was now at risk.

"Our family has already experienced harassment and community ill-feeling as a result of the media linking our family with the accused," she said. She said her daughter was "a guileless and not-worldly person" who needed support.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25071148-601,00.html

MALCOLM Turnbull's attempts to recast the Liberal Party, including knocking off the sitting federal president, are threatening to throw the organisation into the turmoil and divisions of the disastrous Howard-Peacock rivalries of the 1980s.

The Opposition Leader is determined to revamp the Liberal Party but he is being accused by party members of doing away with links to the Howard-Costello years and behaving like a corporate raider in a company merger.

The Liberal leader approached former Liberal federal president Shane Stone to replace Alan Stockdale, a former Victorian treasurer in the Kennett government, as the party president.

Although he agreed to act in the "best interests of the party" and assume office once more, the former Northern Territory chief minister and party treasurer refused to be part of a scheme to knife his friend in the back.

Mr Stockdale told The Australian last night he would be re-nominating for the presidency of the Liberal Party at the federal council meeting in Canberra next month.

"I believe when you take on this job you should serve a full term," he said.

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2008/s2494077.htm

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 17/02/2009

Reporter: Conor Duffy

After years of drought, farmers in many parts of the country are now dealing with flooding rains. In Queensland's gulf country, a number of towns have been shut off for more than six weeks and are running low on supplies. And in New South Wales, a number of towns in the north and west of the state are also under water, and more rain could be on the way.
Transcript
TONY JONES, PRESENTER: After years of drought, farmers in many parts of the country are now dealing with flooding rains. In Queensland's gulf country, a number of towns have been cut off for more than six weeks and are running low on supplies.

In New South Wales, large areas of the north and west of the state are now underwater and more rain could be on the way. Conor Duffy reports.

CONOR DUFFY, REPORTER: The lush dairy paddocks around Bellingen on the NSW mid-north coast have become giant puddles with small pockets of dry land. In the town itself, the Bellinger River rose so high, the only bridge to the outside world disappeared.

MARK TROY, BELLINGEN MAYOR: Floods are a fact of life in our part of the world, but this particular one did - the river rose extraordinarily fast during the night. There was enormous amounts of rain in the upper river catchments. Some areas recorded 250 mls overnight.

CONOR DUFFY: That left thousands stranded.

PETE GALLAGHER, RESIDENT: The water here was a metre deep and it was just gushing down into the paddock.

ANDREW SENSE, RESIDENT: Last night and yesterday, it just continually poured. Yeah, all day, yep, all night. Couldn't believe it when we got up this morning.