The Bush
for Seamus Heaney
Overture:
violins:
it is all scraggy,
wideawake,
ironical,
decked out
in denim fatigues.
Witty and welcoming,
leathery-evergreen,
bemedalled with beercans,
cowpat and wallaby-dung,
flap,
nub,
hinge,
node,
blindeye quartzite,
wafery sandstone,
bright as a button
subtle for mile on mile
far from vulgarity
(far from sleek Europe)
in its array of
furniture tonings
sheeted by sunglaze
lovingly dusted,
wispy and splintery,
tussocky,
corduroy,
all of its idiom
dry as a thesis
to moist outsiders:
wonderfully eloquent
on its home ground,
branchful of adverbs,
lovingly
wombat-hued,
dreamily
sheeptoned,
fluted with scalloping surf
and every step a joke.
Chris Wallace-Crabbe, "The Bush" text from The Amorous Cannibal, Oxford University Press, 1985: audio from The Domestic Sublime, Audio CD, River Road Press, 2009: by permission of River Road Press and the poet. Copyright © 1985, 2009 by Chris Wallace-Crabbe.
Source:
The Amorous Cannibal
(Oxford University Press, 1985)
