{"id":1754,"date":"2010-04-11T22:46:06","date_gmt":"2010-04-11T22:46:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/?p=1754"},"modified":"2010-04-11T22:46:06","modified_gmt":"2010-04-11T22:46:06","slug":"poem-petit-testament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/poem-petit-testament\/","title":{"rendered":"Poem: Petit Testament"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>About time we had <a href=\"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/2009\/01\/poem-durer-innsbruck-1495\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">another<\/a> poem by Australian modernist, Ern Malley (Liverpool, UK 1918\u00a0\u00a0<em>\u2014<\/em> 1943 Sydney, Australia).\u00a0 That <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ernmalley.com\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Malley<\/a> was not an existential being does not make his poetry any less powerful.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>Petit Testament <\/em><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In the twenty-fifth year of my age<br \/>\nI find myself to be a dromedary<br \/>\nThat has run short of water between<br \/>\nOne oasis and the next mirage<br \/>\nAnd having despaired of ever<br \/>\nMaking my obsessions intelligible<br \/>\nI am content at last to be<br \/>\nThe sole clerk of my metamorphoses.<br \/>\nBegin here:<\/span><br \/>\nIn the year 1943<br \/>\nI resigned to the living all collateral images<br \/>\nReserving to myself a man\u2019s<br \/>\nInalienable right to be sad<br \/>\nAt his own funeral.<br \/>\n(Here the peacock blinks the eyes<br \/>\nof his multipennate tail.)<br \/>\nIn the same year<br \/>\nI said to my love (who is living)<br \/>\nDear we shall never be that verb<br \/>\nPerched on the sole Arabian Tree<br \/>\nNot having learnt in our green age to forget<br \/>\nThe sins that flow between the hands and feet<br \/>\n(Here the Tree weeps gum tears<br \/>\nWhich are also real: I tell you<br \/>\nThese things are real)<br \/>\nSo I forced a parting<br \/>\nScrubbing my few dingy words to brightness.<br \/>\nWhere I have lived<br \/>\nThe bed-bug sleeps in the seam, the cockroach<br \/>\nInhabits the crack and the careful spider<br \/>\nSpins his aphorisms in the comer.<br \/>\nI have heard them shout in the streets<br \/>\nThe chiliasms of the Socialist Reich<br \/>\nAnd in the magazines I have read<br \/>\nThe Popular Front-to-Back.<br \/>\nBut where I have lived<br \/>\nSpain weeps in the gutters of Footscray<br \/>\nGuernica is the ticking of the clock<br \/>\nThe nightmare has become real, not as belief<br \/>\nBut in the scrub-typhus of Mubo.<br \/>\nIt is something to be at last speaking<br \/>\nThough in this No-Man\u2019s-language appropriate<br \/>\nOnly to No-Man\u2019s-Land.<br \/>\nSet this down too:<br \/>\nI have pursued rhyme, image, and metre,<br \/>\nKnown all the clefts in which the foot may stick,<br \/>\nStumbled often, stammered,<br \/>\nBut in time the fading voice grows wise<br \/>\nAnd seizing the co-ordinates of all existence<br \/>\nTraces the inevitable graph<br \/>\nAnd in conclusion:<br \/>\nThere is a moment when the pelvis<br \/>\nExplodes like a grenade. I<br \/>\nWho have lived in the shadow that each act<br \/>\nCasts on the next act now emerge<br \/>\nAs loyal as the thistle that in session<br \/>\nPuffs its full seed upon the indicative air.<br \/>\nI have split the infinite. Beyond is anything.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>About time we had another poem by Australian modernist, Ern Malley (Liverpool, UK 1918\u00a0\u00a0\u2014 1943 Sydney, Australia).\u00a0 That Malley was not an existential being does not make his poetry any less powerful. Petit Testament In the twenty-fifth year of my age I find myself to be a dromedary That has run short of water between [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","p1","y2010","m04","d11","h22"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1754","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=1754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1754\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}