Hope and the Inevitable…, poems by Miriel Lenore
Miriel Lenore is an Adelaide poet who lived in Fiji for twenty-two years and visited a Ngaanyatjarra community for over twenty years. Her seven books frequently focus on the interaction of people and places: ‘geography is destiny’? travelling alone together, contrasting the explorer Eyre’s journey along the Bight with that of a group of women, featured twice on the ABC PoeticA programme. An exhibition of poems from in the garden was part of Adelaide Botanic Garden’s Celebration of 150 years. The third volume in her trilogy of 19th century pioneer women and their environments, a wild kind of tune, appeared in 2015. Her current work is of her early life in a Victorian country town. She lives in Adelaide and writes from her perspective as a feminist lesbian grandmother.
hope and the inevitable…
i
our cocktail club decides it’s time to study
Death and Dying 101
though some of us as carers
have passed 201 even 301
the major chapter remains
My first thought: how to help those left? –
should I leave instructions
for machines on or off
decide for burying or burning?
how else to be in charge when I’m not there?
arrange a funeral now?
at least pay in advance should all be spent
after exploring the Iguazu Falls
the yurts of Mongolia
the source of the Limpopo
could I write my eulogy to be sure it’s positive?
plan the wake
choose the music:
A Calm Sea and a Following Wind perhaps
could be Always Look on the Bright Side
must leave money for cakes and wine
it’s a hungry business burying
as the oldest in the club I need the tuition most
instead I exude reticence
resistance refusal
from the 17th Century Sir Thomas Browne speaks for me:
The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying
ii
neat and still stylish
checked by the nurse for buttons
and stains
she waits in the empty hall
it’s taken all morning
in the car she talks and laughs:
we’re all deaf and blind you know
at dinner Mr Kenny
told of his gangrenous leg
soon to be lost
I said ‘your daughter can mend it
or buy a new pair’
I thought he said socks
arriving she braces,
slowly lifts and stumbles from the car
to rest on her white stick
smells jasmine eucalypts
fresh smoke-drift air of the hills
sees blurred trees against blue sky
across the garden
bright yellow plastic bags
filled with water-saving mulch
oh what magnificent chrysanthemums
iii
in Resthaven’s functional dining room
two women sit silent
comfortable together minds still intact
an aide sweeps up cups and plates
leaves for shaking hands
two mounds of pills
a stooped woman intones as she passes
I’ll die tonight
the friends exchange wry smiles
set themselves to stand and manage
on the second try
reach for metal walking frames
salute each other with raised hands
as cavaliers riding to battle
or climbers below the summit
begin the slow plod down corridors
to white-sheeted loneliness
memories dreams replays of guilt
to wake next morning
hoping for strength
to face their constant Everest
the Infant Room
vivid in the morning sun
red geraniums on the window sill
taught me Left from Right
as I faced the King’s picture
I learnt to worship sitting at the feet
of our glorious trainee teacher Miss Edwards
as she pointed to pictures
of Aapples Bballs and Ccats
carefully drawn in coloured chalks on the blackboard
when next year I copied others
by carving my initials into my desk
Miss Hart loomed over me:
I expected better of you Miriel
a refrain which dogged me through much of life
seated near the geraniums in Grade 2
I saw Miss Sutherland drop and die
in front of us
she lay motionless until Mr Pryor
from Grade 6 carried her away
she returned next day
Miss Sutherland’s faint teaching me
that the world was chancy
Willis Biddi with Louise
such white rocks in the Snowy
backbone of submerged dragons
diprotodon teeth
the women’s rock: Lou’s special place
she brings two small cups of water
unspilt from the river
I tell her King David in battle longed
to drink of the well at Bethlehem’s gate
three young warriors broke through
enemy lines to bring the water
which he poured on the ground –
too sacred to drink
silly bugger she says
I pick up an emu feather light and strong
and a stone egg
earth-coloured river-smoothed
a small chip against perfection:
a portrait of my friend
Australia Felix
i
‘A land so inviting
and still without inhabitants’
explorer Mitchell said
of the rich Loddon Plains where
my home town would one day be
the inhabitants he couldn’t see
yet described as ‘fine and friendly’
were soon to be driven off or killed
by the diseases my tribe brought
as they rushed stock into a land
so swiftly made infelicitous
within a hundred years
blown sand buried fences
then covered the new ones
built on top of the old
dust storms blotted out the land
plates still on kitchen tables
of abandoned farms
ii
not all the newcomers left –
new crops now flourish:
lucerne tomatoes olives
in billiard table paddocks of Loddon water
and the Dja Dja Wurrung I never saw as a child
are back as they defend their culture in the courts
a main street memorial honours them
the ancestors never left
© Miriel Lenore