Poem

Fifty Years On

April 2001, no. 229

Poem

Fifty Years On

April 2001, no. 229

Every Intention has something Arbitrary.
Goethe

Early on, my mind was in reverse.
I read a book the name I thought was From
White Cabin to Log House, and ever after
I knew ambition must go to cancrizans.

To Carthage then I came, but this was London,
Waiting for the train from rain-veiled Tilbury.
Just as I thought, I said, coming on deck
and going below. Hell is a city just

like London, but I knew I had to find
a working hell, I’d lived too long in books.
The thing I didn’t know was that I sought
a London which was in me from the start.

Not fair to this fair city. But if hearts
can bring their darkness with them, then I brought
my dark provincial hours, verandah-lit,
to match the Mayhew shadows of these streets.

I came, I saw, I conjured. I am here.
Of my ignoble comrades, most are dead.
The end is what the end is: open sea,
if mind can cross the sand bar of its fears.

Fifty years ago I’d never have
quoted a word of Goethe’s. I gave up hope
to follow a more formal entropy.
Unchanging stars parade their hemispheres.

Peter Porter

Peter Porter was born in Brisbane in 1929 and died in London in 2010; he had lived there since 1951. He published countless poetry collections, anthologies, reviews, and essays for almost half a century. He was a frequent contributor to ABR. His collections include The Cost of Seriousness (1978), Fast Forward (1984), and Collected Poems (1983 and 1999). His many awards included the 1988 Whitbread Poetry Award, the 1990 ALS Gold Medal, the 2002 Forward Poetry Prize, and the 2002 Queen’s Medal for Poetry. He wrote thousands of reviews, essays, lectures, and introductions. His work appeared in Australian Book Review from 1985 to 2010. His fellow poet–critic Peter Steele, who wrote a monograph on Porter, published this tribute in ABR following Peter Porter’s death on 23 April 2010. ABR’s poetry prize was renamed after him to honour his remarkable poetry and generosity to countless Australian poets.