Poem

Empty for years, the house can tell us nothing.
Even though it is a maisonette, ostensibly half of a pair.
The other half is normal, inhabited, has a real dog.
Rubbish gathers here, junk mail overfills the letterbox and droops when rain makes it sodden.

1.

Surrounded by the countless dead
And restrained in illness to her bed
The hilltipped winds that seared her face
Made her young as they made her old

I

Rooms so familiar
they complete themselves in me –
this darkened hall where the glass cases,

'Oscillations', a new poem by Toby Fitch.

1

The far margin of wintering wetlands,
mist before sunrise. Outside my window
a rock parrot is perched on its fence-post.

Taking note might prompt some things:
look! Even a colon finds correlation
with the eyes of Hoji’s frog, and the king’s.

The answer could only be yes. Or,
(as James would have it) it was a question,
the way she turned back to him
seemed to say, that deserved

You’ve always associated the two terms together
partly due to your reading of Schiller; partly due
to your watching of Kimba. Kimba sublimates
his mother in the water. You’ve always thought

1.

Port Phillip rucks & tears in the wind
and where the creek joins the bay, the lace
is tattered marl. Wild gulls pick

Dietrich Bonhoeffer woke up in a plane
to Australia, next to Kevin Rudd, who flew
from India, still astounded that Julia
Gillard was selling it uranium