Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE VICTORIA MARKETS RECOLLECTED IN TRANQUILITY, by FRANK WILMOT


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE VICTORIA MARKETS RECOLLECTED IN TRANQUILITY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Winds are bleak, stars are bright
Last Line: Apples, ripen for the dray!
Alternate Author Name(s): Maurice, Furnley
Subject(s): Markets; Victoria, Australia; Supermarkets


I

WINDS are bleak, stars are bright,
Loads lumber along the night:
Looming, ghastly white,
A towering truck of cauliflowers sways
Out of the dark, roped over and packed tight
Like faces of a crowd of football jays.

The roads come in, roads dark and long,
To the knock of hubs and a sleepy song.
Heidelberg, Point Nepean, White Horse,
Flemington, Keilor, Dandenong,
Into the centre from the source.

Rocking in their seats
The worn-out drivers droop
When dawn stirs in the streets
And the moon's a silver hoop;
Come rumbling into the silent mart,
To put their treasure at its heart,
Waggons, lorries, a lame Ford bus,
Like ants along the arms of an octopus
Whose body is all one mouth; that pays them hard
And drives them back with less than a slave's reward.

When Batman first at Heaven's command
Said, 'This is the place for a peanut-stand.'
It must have been grand!

II

'Cheap to-day, lady; cheap to-day!'
Jostling water-melons roll
From fountains of Earth's mothering soul.
Tumbling from box and tray
Rosy, cascading apples play
Each with a glowing auriole
Caught from a split sun-ray.
'Cheap to-day, lady, cheap to-day.'
Hook the carcases from the dray!
(Where the dun bees hunt in droves
Apples ripen in the groves.)

An old horse broods in a Chinaman's cart
While from the throbbing mart
Go cheese and celery, pears and jam
In barrow, basket, bag or pram
To the last dram the purse affords --
Food, food for the hordes.

Shuffling in the driven crush
The souls and the bodies cry,
Rich and poor, skimped and flush,
'Spend or perish, buy or die!'

Food, food for the hordes!
Turksheads tumble on the boards.

There's honey at the dairy produce stall
Where the strung saveloys festooning fall;
Yielding and yellow, the beautiful butter blocks
Confront the poultryman's plucked Plymouth Rocks.
The butcher is gladly selling,
Chopping and slaughtering, madly yelling.
A bull-like bellow for captured sales;
A great crowd surges around his scales.

Slap down the joint!
The finger point
Wobbles and comes alive,
Springs round to twenty and back to five.

No gracious burbling, nor arts to please,
No hypocritical felicities.
Buy and be damned to you! Sell and be damned also!
Decry the goods, he'll tell you where to go!

To him Creation's total aim
Is selling chops to a doubting dame.
And what will matter his steaks and joints,
The underdone and the overdone,
On the day when the old Earth jumps the points
And swings into the sun?

Along the shadows furtive, lone,
The unwashed terrier carries his week-end bone.
An old horse with a pointed hip
And dangling disillusioned under-lip
Stands in a harvest-home of cabbage leaves
And grieves.
A lady by a petrol case,
With a far-off wounded look in her face
Says, in a voice of uncertain pitch,
'Muffins' or 'crumpets,' I'm not sure which.
A pavement battler whines with half a sob,
'Ain't anybody got a bloody bob?'
Haunted by mortgages and overdrafts
The old horse droops between the shafts.
A smilling Chinaman upends a bag
And spills upon the bench with thunder-thud
(A nearby urchin trilling the newest rag)
Potatoes caked with loamy native mud.

Andean pinnacles of labelled jam.
The melting succulence of two-toothed lamb.
The little bands of hemp that truss
The succulent asparagus
That stands like tiny sheaves of purple wheat
Ready to eat!
Huge and alluring hams and rashered swine
In circular repetitive design.
Gobbling turkeys and ducks in crates,
Pups in baskets and trays of eggs;
A birdman turns and gloomily relates
His woes to a girl with impossible legs.

When Batman first at Heaven's command
Stuck flag-staffs in this sacred strand ...
We'll leave all that to the local band.

Rabbits skinned in a pink nude row,
Little brown kidneys out on show;
'Ready for the pot, mum, ready to bake!'
Buy them, devour them for pity's sake --
(Trapped, 'neath the moon in a field of dream,
Did anyone hear a bunny scream?)

'Cheap to-day, lady, cheap to-day.'
Slimy fish slide off the tray.
Women pondering with a sigh --
'Spend or perish, buy or die!'
Packed with babies and Brussels sprouts,
It's a ricketty pram for a woman to shove --
But tell me, lady, whereabouts
Is the long leisure of love?

Flattened out on a trestle board
Somebody's trousers await their lord.
The populace takes a sidelong view
Of a coolie from one of the Orient boats,
With the help of the bo's'n and half the crew,
Trying on all of the sick-bob coats.
'Will these fit, Willie?' 'No, they're fours.'
'Oh, don't be silly, they're bigger than yours.'

'Midst iron and kitchenware,
IN shameful, hidden nooks,
'Twixt wrenches and rakes and brackets at fourpence a pair,
Some dirty little crumpled books.
Pitiful they are --
'Dred' and 'A Mother's Recompense'
So pitiful and drab and far
From use or influence.
Dead gilt lettering in faded banners,
Dead laws, dead names, dead manners.
And yet I dare not touch
Their gritty spines, remembering, vaguely moved,
So many of their dear cousins that I have known and loved,
Possibly, at times, too much.
'Lost Gyp' and 'Garnered Sheaves'
Their curled and withered leaves
Stir in the faint draught of a passing dame;
Lift, fall, and again lift,
Till, parted, some pages drift
'Without a home,' without a name,
Far down the dusty aisle
Beyond the stocking stall and the man that's a bargain suit
And the girl with a loud, loud smile.
Alas! These pages originally
Were stolen from a Sunday School library,
Now 'tis their dismal fate to be
Crushed in the crimson saw-dust under a butcher's boot!
When Batman first at Heaven's command
Set foot on this square mile of land ...
Ah, no, he never would understand ...

III

Apples ripen in the groves
Where the dun bees hunt in droves
And the dainty blossom slips
Honey fetters on their lips.
Tumble down
Thistledown
Where the strawberries are sown.

Snowdrop pulls back from the bail.
Now the sickle's on the nail.
Now the plough is in the shed
And old Nugget paws his bed.
Steal away,
Gentle day;
apples, ripen for the dray!

IV

Shuffling in the driven tide
The huddled people press,
Hoarding and gloating, having defied
Hunger, cold and nakedness
For a few days more -- or less.
Is it nothing to you that pass?
Will you not pity their need?
Store beef fattens on stolen grass,
Brows grow dark with covetous greed.
Storm or manacle, cringe or pray,
There is no way but the money way.
Pouring sun, pouring heavens, pouring earth,
And the life-giving seas:
Treasure eternally flowing forth,
None greater than these!
Richness, colour and form,
Ripe flavours and juices rare!

Within men's hearts rises a deathless prayer
Deep as a spirit storm,
Giving thanks that earth has offered such
(So grateful to the eye, so rich to touch)
Miraculous varieties of fare.

And yet that lamb with the gentle eye
She had to die ...
There have been foolish dreams
Of fishes pulled from reedy streams
Of delicate earthly fruits
Being torn up by the roots --
But only the Mandragora screams.

Gentle curates and slaughtermen
Murder the cattle in the pen:
Body, Spirit, the Word, the Breath
Only survive by so much death.
The old horse with the pointed hip
And disillusioned under-lip
Stands in a drift of cabbage leaves
And grieves.

V

There is no wile to capture
Rugged and massive things
In all their fervent rapture
Soaring without wings.
No high vision can fashion
Bowed body, groping hand
Urged by a frenzy of passion
Difficult to understand;
Stripped of affected aversions
And muffling mannerliness
Which, like the laws of the Medes and Persians,
Cramp and oppress.

Grace is the power:
Only vision can flower
Into immortal song.
Art is mannered, pure and long --
These folk, accursed, can have no vital part
In schooled philosophies or templed art.
A force that throngs the by-ways and the streets
A dark, enormous influence that pours
Its passion through the light and vainly beats
On spired churches and closed college doors.
In love -- the jealous pistol and the 'jug,'
In hate -- the bottle-swinger and the thug,
In peace -- some rows of figures and a graph,
In war -- a motto on a cenotaph.
Now the plough is in the shed,
And old Nugget paws his bed.
Steal away,
Gentle day;
Apples, ripen for the dray!





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