Oh, Yes, Then

October 2007, no. 295

Oh, Yes, Then

October 2007, no. 295

When I am rotting patiently where
my eldest, Ben, now lies
And the bright prunus petals are dropping away
faster than flies,

when Georgia has swatches of grey
in her falls of fairish hair,
Toby has a neat condominium
set up offshore somewhere,

and a nimbler, wiser Josh, outdoors
is performative with his hands,
busy as a rock-cod, making something
he tacitly understands,

where will you be, the flamingly
joyous hearth of my heart?
I can’t get the answer, no matter how
I tune up the shawms of art.

Chris Wallace-Crabbe

Chris Wallace-Crabbe AM is the author of more than twenty collections of poetry. His most recent books of verse include The Universe Looks Down (2005), and Telling a Hawk from a Handsaw (2008). He is Professor Emeritus in Culture and Communication at Melbourne University. Also a public speaker and commentator on the visual arts, he specialises in ‘artists’ books’. Read It Again, a volume of critical essays, was published in 2005. Among other awards he has won the Dublin Prize for Arts and Sciences and the Christopher Brennan Award for Literature. His latest book is Rondo (2018).