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‘And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.’
– T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
Laid out lulled in luscious green,
sweet muslin drawing on the breeze
Springtime in our courtyard
with the jacaranda tree
Misty mauve effusive,
Her visitation draws on us
to merge in her
ethereal embrace.
Allure miraculously sudden –
bomb blast brilliance born in colour
leaves yesterday’s bleak and scribbly limbs,
all dark and winter cool,
suspended alive
somewhere beyond
the sandstone certain tower clock that ticks in drifting deep blue sky,
yesterday’s bleak and scribbly limbs,
all dark and winter cool –
footfalls, echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
The blossoms lift,
float weightlessly round, dressing things up
time’s indigo brides.
I follow their lead –
accompanied sweet by pigeons’ refrain, by choirs streamed down stairs
to Muru Dturali,
new ‘Pathway To Grow,’ new First Nations Garden.
And I wonder about Botany Bay,
about Great Grandpa Stanley and Gallipoli, how he survived
and how he loved Sydney with all his heart….
Slipping, quicksand rapid so
mind’s eye dissolves
To vanish underfoot.
A million tiny points of view,
A million bit mosaic –
displaced, reimagined, piggy backed back together
and where’s a spot to land?
So many whispers in these hallowed halls,
Whispers of the past –
Past Revs, Chefs, seasons, students,
All plugged into a venerable slipstream
With Einstein, Byron, Kant and Keats….
And through it all there’s surely, too
Eliot’s ‘voice of the hidden waterfall’
Between two waves of the sea.
Laid out lulled in luscious green
Sweet muslin drawing on the breeze
Springtime in our courtyard
With the jacaranda tree
