 |
ARTLOOK #7 | December / January 2004/2005
Margaret Barbalet
ACT Poetry Award
Drought and the Crow, 4pm
This is the closest the crow
comes to singing: a scripted language,
written with a scratching pen, black tones
against a sky no longer recognisable
as blue. Against that fierce white glare
what can it voice, while here,
hunkered in the shade of a room
inside a tent of bricks
I ache for coolness
and reconstruct the smell of rain.
Outside in a sky the colour of ash
the crow opens its beak and
words with umlauts
arc, a conversation with the dust;
the memory-repeat-the memory
of rain.
