Falling In A Defensive Wave

*

They lie, the men who tell us for reasons of their own
That want is here a stranger, and that misery's unknown;
For where the nearest suburb and the city proper meet
My window-sill is level with the faces in the street
Drifting past, drifting past,
To the beat of weary feet
While I sorrow for the owners of those faces in the street.

And cause I have to sorrow, in a land so young and fair,
To see upon those faces stamped the marks of Want and Care;
I look in vain for traces of the fresh and fair and sweet
In sallow, sunken faces that are drifting through the street
Drifting on, drifting on,
To the scrape of restless feet;
I can sorrow for the owners of the faces in the street.

In hours before the dawning dims the starlight in the sky
The wan and weary faces first begin to trickle by,
Increasing as the moments hurry on with morning feet,
Till like a pallid river flow the faces in the street
Flowing in, flowing in,
To the beat of hurried feet
Ah! I sorrow for the owners of those faces in the street.

Henry Lawson Faces In The Street.

All is not lost. But governments are wise to listen to the voices of the people over the those of bureaucrats and the funded caste, and all is not lost, not lost, but we can't shake the shadows and we can't frighten the horses, we can't stoop in abject pity and make fools of ourselves, only to climb back on, to defy all logic, to begin again. And again. And again. That was why we were so curdled. It was why the darkness was so bleak. It was why Christmas would never come, not for him, not now. The loneliness of whores. They only pretended to be mean, cool, human, they sought in their own blackness another way of being, and were ashamed. He wasn't going to give up. Not yet. Not now.

But the entire project of abandonment, of sinking into the swamp, of being halleluyah in the dark ages, all of it with criminal intent, all of it asking, rescue me, rescue me, because there wasn't any other way of being saved. That was when they knelt down. When they were beaten. I've never known one who reached that point to fail, the man said. A doctor. A well respected man. He listened and was in awe. Everything was so vivid, so profound. Every last second of the conversion. The time-honoured Yungian thing; as if the entire civilisation was caught in a mundane street, in a derelict house, in arbitrary and misguided friendships.

And so it was that he came begging once more. Liquid delight had turned to liquid fear and the good times, when there were any, were but graffiti splashes on the wall several over; behind the pole. There were so many high-gloss images now, with TV and the X-Files, he set out to watch every last one of them, in sequence, and had reached 3.20 - the 20th episode in the third season. If shame came stalking, shame and gusts of emotional embarrassment, as if his own bleak soul had failed to eradicate the tired old glue, the ancient crone, as if anyone cared. I'm sorry to have dragged you into all this, he said.

We were committed. It's all over in a flash, my dad was right, he said. Standing on the stairs. His gaunt face the result of one too many parties. Oh how it had seemed as if everything was ours. As if no other generation could have so fully held the truth. As if our discoveries would make all the difference. And the tide, though it had never ceased, would stop here, at this moment in history, this point in time, and he would let his ancient fingers brush across his still handsome face. But that was not what he wanted. Oh, you're wonderful, a real man, he minced when Ken produced a Peter Stuyversant and every cell in his body said thank you.

So it was that the inner voice and the outer voice became so garbled there was no easy solution. It wasn't just thought disorder. It wasn't the usual melancholy, creeping across everything, flattening the landscape, deadening the hues. No, it was something more invidious, more poisonous, more momentous. Change was afoot, the seven year cycle, and all the signs pointed upwards, take your prize, be rewarded, grow up, grow old, laugh in an expensive car as they swerved around a bend on the Algerian coast. And remembered, oh he remembered, when he met Paul Bowles and life was going to be the grandest adventure any doomed agent had ever lived.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/25/2579791.htm?section=business

Treasurer Wayne Swan has admitted he got it wrong over proposed changes to employee share ownership schemes, but will not detail how the Government will change its Budget promise.

The Government wanted to limit tax breaks for the share ownership schemes to people earning less than $60,000 per year, to prevent high-income earners using them to avoid tax.

But the proposed measure caused a backlash from unions and business, which called for the income threshold to be raised.

Mr Swan says the scheme will be changed, but is not saying what changes will be made.

"I certainly think mistakes have been made in this area," he said.

"I accept responsibility for that, and the commonsense thing to do in this situation is to go out and consult and get it right.

"I'm not going to buy into the income level [debate]. We've acknowledged that the $60,000 income cap for access to the tax exemption may be too low.

"We're going to go out there and consult about it, but I'm not going to pre-empt the outcome of that consultation."

Meanwhile, Mr Swan has defended the Government's decision to increase the pension age to 67.

Two major unions have written to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd complaining about the Budget move to lift the official retirement age from 65 to 67.

They argue it will be particularly tough on people in physically demanding jobs.

Mr Swan says he acknowledges that point, but he argues the Government cannot set different limits depending on the type of work people do.