The Temptation of St Anthony by Sidney Nolan

Tags

Australian art, billabongs, Black Mist, catharsis, Cooper's Creek, desertification, drought, Emu Fields, eucalypt, gamma rays, grail, Graves' Disease, isotopes, manus dei, Maralinga, Mount Hopeless, nuthatch, Regin, Rimbaud, Sidney Nolan, St Anthon's Fire, Temptation of St Anthony

Image: The Temptation of St Anthony by Sidney Nolan: NGV, Victoria.

 

Rimbaud: I sought voyages to disperse enchantments

that had colonised my mind.

 

Where the sun strikes and the prickly thorn proffers

no shelter and the cicada no relief,

there’s a dessicated torment and no

solitude in the desert, as Christ found.

Harsh glare distorts even a saint’s vision.

The reclusive can lose their perspective.

Gamma rays will cause some to lose their minds.

 

A goanna is my constant totem

and a huge dragonfly lures me to leave,

but Satan has monopolised the air.

 

If I kill the dragon; dip my finger

in its blood, will it reveal its secret?

Will it transform me into a prophet,

who may see the approach of The Black Mist,

or experience St Anthony’s Fire?

The drought has made the billabongs brackish.

The gold cache tempts for a month of Sundays.

 

The Manus Dei issues no blessing;

no intervention.  The struggle is mine.

The mind is its own place and my free will

may choose to receive the full stigmata.

 

I foresee The Darkening Ecliptic;

the universal diagnosis is

Graves’ disease – even for haloed beings.

Should I go to the wars and fight Regin,

or heed the nuthatches’ advice and act?

I must carry knowledge in my own grail:

the only way to be a dark hero.

 

My own survival strategy was the

weaving of eucalypt leaves, to combat

oppressions of desertification:

devil-delivered snakes, beasts, scorpions.

Yet each seemed to lack power in itself.

If I was confident and mocked demons,

might I reduce them to a puff of smoke?

 

The last man, or woman, on this scorched Earth

will carry in their bodies isotopes,

blown from Maralinga and Emu Fields.

The thunder brings no catharsis as yet.

Each must pass Mount Hopeless; find Cooper’s Creek.

The Perpetual Calendar

Tags

Book of Labours, Canaan, catharsis, hawking, pig sticking, reaping, sickle, sowing, threshing, vintage

We have just had Harvest Thanksgiving, so here’s an

old creation for you, in the manner of a Medieval Book of

Labours:

 

The Perpetual Calendar

I 

In January

he drinks by the fire,

mulling things over.

II

An icy landscape:

he raises his sharp axe blade,

then floats logs downstream.

III

March is for digging

and setting seeds in the fields;

sowing what they’ll reap.

IV

A flowering branch

is borne in April:

fertility sign?

V

Hawking is fine sport,

though not as lively as love-

but the bird is faithful.

VI

Hats keep off the sun.

It is the month of mowing.

All flesh is as grass.

VII

Sickles cutting corn…

thick- fleeced sheep need to be shorn.

It’s hot wearing boots.

VIII

Threshing with a flail,

his mouth set in a grim line

of concentration.

IX

Now vintage is here.

Grape clusters are as large

as those in Canaan.

X

Birds snatch winter seed

as fast as he can sow it.

Is there no respite?

XI

Knocking down acorns

provides some variety

and will plump his pigs.

XII

Pig – sticking’s grim work:

a December catharsis-

feasting, then fasting.

Snodbury

Tags

Antarctic krill, catharsis, compund eye, convergent evolution, Dianetics, Hornby, le mot juste, Rev Awdry, Ribena, Salsa, Scrooge, stirrup cups, Tree of Life

(Compound Eye of Antarctic Krill: Wikipedia.  Photo by Gerd Alberti and

Uwe Kils)

 

Snodbury was actually his mother’s surname, he believed.

She had waltzed off to Venezuela, following her political dreams

and had settled down with a salsa musician, producing his half-

brother.

Aunt Augusta ( Editor:In Retrospect May She Rest In Peace and Rise In

Glory!) had deposited him, as a confused four year old, in St Birinus’

Pre-Prep Department, where he might have turned into a pre-pubescent

Scrooge, given that he was often forgotten at half terms.

It was not the first time that Gus (Snod) had had the distinct sensation

that someone was standing behind him whilst he was shaving.  Through

the condensation he wondered if, like another sweet young prince, he was

about to encounter his ghostly father.  There were more surprising things

in Heaven and Earth, he was sure.

He felt that it was not entirely down to thespian self-delusions that he

could summon up a vague remembrance of an encounter with a man

called Arthur in some school holidays.  The visits were etched on his

consciousness as they were marked by the gifts of a piece of Hornby

kit and a Rev Awdry book.

Aunt Augusta would collect him and take him on the train all the way

to Kent and then they would take a taxi to Wivern Mote.

His aunt and Arthur would sit round the fire in the converted stable block,

drinking mulled wine, if it was a Christmas Holiday, and gin and tonic, if

it wasn’t.  He remembered the odd silver cups from which the wine had

been imbibed.  They had embossed foxes’ heads on them.  He had been

drinking Ribena from a tooth mug and had asked about them.  He

remembered now: they were stirrup cups, he had been informed.

When it was time to go, he had to shake Arthur’s hand with his own

mittened fingers and he grew to anticipate the half crown that would

be passed into his woolly palm.  It was never a two shilling piece.  He

could tell, without looking- which would have been rude-just by feeling

the milled edge.  Yes, Arthur had been generous, if enigmatic.

It wouldn’t seem long before he was back to the security of school- that

same establishment to which he had dedicated not only the best years

of his life,but the majority of them.  The only noteworthy hiatus was

when he had studied Classics at university and had then returned like

the Biblical dog…

The toilet paper he had licked and stuck to his shaving nick fell off.  He

hoped the wound would heal more quickly than the childhood scars he

was well aware of bearing into advanced adulthood.

‘Catharsis‘- that was le mot juste.  If he could only lance the boil of his

carbuncular life, he felt the bloodletting would be beneficial.  There had

been so many toxic infections visited upon him in the course of his

school-masterly life.

He laughed to himself:  Pus in Boots!  This was the way his tangential mind

roved around, seeking bad puns.

Yes, Dear Reader, the exploration of the life and times of this apparent

nonentity will be the very means whereby he may be purged and brought

to a hopeful re-birth (but not in any Dianetical way, I assure you.)

By tracing his twig’s development on The Tree of Life, by exploring

different starting points, he hoped to arrive at the identical solution: himself.

The Biology teacher had explained convergent evolution to him, but I won’t

bore you with an elucidation now.

He had also wished that he could see the world through a compound eye-

to see himself as others saw him and to see himself more clearly.

Perhaps with ocular enhancement he would avoid any more shaving nicks…