Poetry

FISHING FOR STARS, TIANANMEN SQUARE, 2001

 

                  I

Within this Gate of Heavenly Peace

the only stars are fixed five-pointers,

Red Army neon in a greenhouse sky dome.

Streetlights balance loftily

like descended space craft shining.

Gold filigrees of lighted pearls

drape temple roofs and august walls.

From the Forbidden City

Mao’s expansive presence beams.

 

The obelisk to the People’s Heroes

illuminates the inner Square;

grey-stone statues build

the new Great Wall under enemy fire;

sentries stand with rifles barbed,

waiting for the enemy to be named.

 

White-gloved soldiers march

mechanically past Mao’s shrine

where thousands shuffle to grieve

that crystal light embalmed,

apotheosised, yet slowly decomposing.

 

Hawkers deal in operatic lines,

and in this breath of summer night

the masses now are flying kites.

  But my refractory line of masks

won’t pivot and swing with tai chi grace.

The commander of my gang of four

won’t quell the insurrection of his back row boys

with that fixed red scowling.

Perhaps kites sense a lack

of discipline in foreign fingers.

 

                  II

Students practise charm in English,

preserving alien images

in camera clicks and flashes.

Children propel themselves like bees,

hunched and helmeted in line,

with clockwise whirrs of roller blades

on concrete tiles. They would not have seen

the tanks out here, grinding down dissenters’ bone,

but do their nights nurse dreams

of immolation?

 

                  III

Dragon wings unfold,

silk-bright in expectancy.

Radiant in Olympic favour,

slums make way for movie sets

as the dragon marries her young

in black and white

and sends them off to suited futures.

I follow a gossamer thread of sight

to the fading gleam of a flying fish.

Within this Gate of Heavenly Peace,

the old master demonstrates

with consummate ease his handline skill.

Surpassing all this ground-lit glory,

he fishes the zenith

for enlightenment.

Anne Morgan

from A Reckless Descent from Eternity,

Ginninderra Press 2009.

To buy a copy of A Reckless Descent from Eternity, please follow this link.


Launch of A Reckless Descent from Eternity


Anne's first full-length poetry collection, A Reckless Descent from Eternity, has just been published by Ginninderra Press, Port Adelaide.

Kathryn Lomer writes of A Reckless Descent from Eternity,

'What is impressive is the ambit of this collection, the way Morgan explores with equal authority he natural world, history, mythology, the vagaries of humankind, and grief. A finely-tuned intelligence shines through these poems, which are lexically rich and jam-packed with precise imagery. Her poems marry the down-to-earth to the numinous; they make evident the breadth of Morgan's engagement with life and with language, and her passion for fusing the two.'

Poems in this collection have appeared in The Weekend Australian Review, Island, New England Review, Famous Reporter, The Write Stuff Showcase of Tasmanian Poetry, RePUBlic Readings, the Poet’s RePUBlic broadsheet, Marginata, The Word is Out magazine, Blue Giraffe, Thirst and Pixel Papers, and the anthologies A Net of Hands, Ed. Megan Schaffner, 2009, The Weighing of the Heart, poetry anthology of emerging WA writers, 2007, Mood Cumulus, Central Coast Poets, 2007, Running Through the Stars, Fellowship of Australian Writers Tasmania, 2009, and River of Verse, 2004, Black River Press, 2004.

In 2007, Anne was awarded a Varuna/Macquarie Bank Longlines’ mentorship to work on A Reckless Descent from Eternity with Deb Westbury as mentor.

Echoes from the FiretrailsAnne also has a chapbook, Echoes from the Firetrails, published by Tom Collins House Press in 2004.

Anne has won awards for her poetry, including the Orange Arts Council Banjo Paterson National Poetry award. In 2006, Anne was a prizewinner in the Gwen Harwood poetry award and was a featured poet at WA’s Spring Poetry Festival.