{"id":1454,"date":"2009-12-09T18:46:43","date_gmt":"2009-12-09T18:46:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/?p=1454"},"modified":"2009-12-09T18:46:43","modified_gmt":"2009-12-09T18:46:43","slug":"poem-lines-for-a-friend-1948-1964","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/poem-lines-for-a-friend-1948-1964\/","title":{"rendered":"Poem: Lines for a Friend 1948-1964"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writing just now about Mendelssohn’s sorrow at the death of his close friend, Edward Rietz<\/a>, brought to mind this poem by Australian poet Michael Dransfield (1948-1973):<\/p>\n

Lines for a Friend 1948-1964<\/em>
\n“Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath.” – Tennyson<\/em>
\nover before you knew it
\nmisdiagnosed and done for
\nthey cremated their error
\nyou became some ashes a little placque a case history
\npaintings you did are lost also your poems
\nnothing but ashes in a wall of dead remains
\nyou will not see again the way
\nthe morning sun floods down O’Connell Street
\nperhaps you are the sun now
\nperhaps not
\nchildhood was the salt edge of the Pacific
\nwas the school under the old trees
\nit was soon after that they disposed of you
\nI went to the funeral you and I were the only two
\nthere really the only two who knew the gods had gone
\ndeath and morning the only two,
\ndamned because poets
\nover before we know it
\nwe pack our lives in little souls and go
\nout with the tide the long procession
\nthe ant the elephant the worker the child
\neven those doctors who stood around they will die sometime
\ntheir money cannot buy them out of it
\nwe know what is to come a silence teeming
\nwith the unfinished spirits good and bad,
\nand how we’ve lived determines what we’ll be
\nnext time around, if time’s not buried with us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Reference:<\/em>
\nThomas W. Shapcott (Editor) [1970]:\u00a0 Australian Poetry Now<\/em>. Melbourne, Australia:\u00a0 Sun Books, p. 210.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writing just now about Mendelssohn’s sorrow at the death of his close friend, Edward Rietz, brought to mind this poem by Australian poet Michael Dransfield (1948-1973): Lines for a Friend 1948-1964 “Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath.” – Tennyson over before you knew it misdiagnosed and done for they cremated their error […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","p1","y2009","m12","d09","h18"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}