Voyagers Read online

  the bird in its whoops-a-daisy

  voice. It has gone.

  We think we hear it singing

  from a distant tree.

  Since

  when

  have birds the gift of prophecy?

  38

  Vivienne Plumb

  The Last Day of the World

  That will be the day none of the eggs will cook. There will be strange phenomena. Babies born with three ears. White elephants.

  Stains will appear on the wall. The heavens will open at midday and the rain will rattle down upon us. Ants will act like individuals.

  At home, the mail will never arrive. The silver beet and parsley will run to seed in twenty-four hours, and the stove will not light.

  Everything that insurance policies refuse to cover, will happen.

  The clock hands will move in reverse. The horrors will come upon us. Burning fi res and a smell like fi ve hundred sliced durians will prevail. There will be the sound of great fl apping wings. The porridge will go bad. Chasms will slide open. We will never speak to each other again. It will be dark and our old lives will be nothing but a disappearing pinprick of light on the road ahead.

  39

  Louis Johnson

  Four Poems From the Strontium Age

  1.

  Before the Day of Wrath

  There were cities here in the hills

  In my great-grandfather’s youth

  Where now are only blackened bricks and walls

  Devoured in the year of wrath.

  And in the desert where none of us

  Dare venture, hearing tell

  Of fabulous, dangerous monsters, fl owers

  Were said to emerge when rare rain fell.

  Today the rain draws blood; the winds

  Burn out our eyes; the barbarous

  Plants tear fl esh that never mends:

  Sweet water-holes turn suddenly poisonous.

  It must have been a lovely country once,

  Populous and inventive – a golden age

  Wherein the young knew laughter, loved to dance

  Even grew old. Daylight as bright as courage

  Existed for many hours at a time, we’re told.

  But these, perhaps, are fables meant to inspire

  Us now in the darkness helping us to hold

  Something to cherish crouched by the guttering fi re.

  40

  2.

  It’s An Ill Wind …

  There was a time when the patterns did not change

  So frequently, so our instructor says.

  In those days a girl would have thought it strange

  To have two or three heads, to praise

  Her lover’s thirty-nine fi ngers with all her tongues,

  And her narrow chest contained one set of lungs.

  But how strange that would be to one of our modern youths

  Who can pick out a girl with a breast for each of his mouths.

  41

  3.

  Spring

  All day the black rain has fallen

  And now, in the hour of light

  The livid river and the lake are swollen;

  The range of hills that were bright

  And red with their carpet of dust

  Are dissolving away. Soon there will be

  No shelter: again we must

  Pack and move in search of kinder country.

  Then will begin again that dread migration

  Through sightless deserts, and the silent land

  Refl ecting sickness into our eyes, starvation

  Bloating the children with its grotesque hand.

  And never knowing which way is the best

  To set the foot because the perils met there

  Can never be foreseen nor wholly guessed,

  For who can tell what colour of the air

  Harbours most pain? Surely the Spring

  Is the most bitter season of suffering.

  42

  4.

  Haven

  We have come to a quiet valley in the hills

  Where a road, this time unbroken, runs

  Right back to the desert fringe. It fi lls

  Us with a dreaming hope. The sun’s

  Mild light is clean; about and above

  The slopes are grassy. In our ears

  The little river sings a song like love.

  In the old country, for two thousand years

  There ruled a king called God, the story goes.

  It seems impossible, but here is a place

  Where one might trust to fable. Flowers grow

  And trees stand straight beside the watercourse.

  Let us not be afraid. After two days and nights

  In such a haven, we fear that we may have brought

  With us those breeding poisons of the world’s blight

  That will blacken the earth here and pollute the light.

  And already the leaders confer in the common interest,

  And it’s rumoured that they plan to eliminate

  The sickliest and those of us who are least

  Like men should be. Oh, may we all grow straight

  In this place of the sun. Let me not think of these

  Cruel facts of life in this valley of green trees.

  43

  Michael O’Leary

  Nuclear Family – A Fragment

  In dreams I walked

  Through crowded, confused streets

  Where people, scurrying like rats

  on a sinking ship

  Ran in all directions towards survival

  In dreams I moved

  Through a human fog

  It was my single purpose

  That kept me going, and

  Kept me from going insane,

  To

  fi nd you and the child whom I love

  When I saw you in the hall of mirrors

  Like all the other victims

  you radiated decay

  Your hair had shrivelled and gone grey overnight

  I held my arms outstretched

  Hoping you and your child would embrace me

  But you turned away

  and she ran to you, as if I were

  a stranger

  I picked up my gun

  And went outside where things weren’t quite

  so grim

  (I mean this war has killed love

  so what’s a pile of rotting bodies)

  In my uniform, I watched the beauty of

  another atomic fl ash

  A tank drove by

  I jumped aboard

  And we headed toward

  The war which can never be won!

  44

  Ruth Gilbert

  Still Centre

  Noon turned to night;

  Atomic-voiced

  The thunder mushroomed overhead,

  Windows and mirrors screamed with light,

  But placidly she went on kneading bread:

  ‘A chimney down, or maybe two,’ she said.

  45

  Fleur Adcock

  Last Song

  Goodbye, sweet symmetry. Goodbye, sweet world

  of mirror-images and matching halves,

  where animals have usually four legs

  and people nearly always two;

  where birds and bats and butterfl ies and bees

  have balanced wings, and even fl ies

  can fl y straight if they try. Goodbye

  to one-a-side for eyes and ears and arms

  and breasts and balls and shoulder-blades

  and hands; goodbye to the straight line

  drawn down the central spine,

  making us double in a world

  where oddness is acceptable only

  under the sea, for the lopsided lobster,

  the wonky oyster, the creepily rotated

  fl atfi sh with both eyes over one gill;

  goodbye to the sweet certitudes of our

  mammal
ian order, where to be

  born with one eye or three thumbs

  points to not being human. It will come.

  In the next world, when this one’s gone skew-whiff,

  we shall be algae or lichen, things

  we’ve hardly even needed to pronounce.

  If the fl ounder still exists it will be king.

  46

  Rob Jackaman

  from Lee: A Science Fiction Poem

  4. Viaticum

  ‘I dreamed I saw St. Augustine

  Alive as you or me,

  Moving through these quarters

  In the utmost misery… ’

  – Bob Dylan, ‘I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine’

  Though it was true

  Sometimes the radiation

  Sickness hung in pockets

  In the mountains where he worked

  Nothing halted his task

  Of reconstructing the past

  On the evidence available.

  And his collection grew:

  Miraculously

  saved

  An empty bottle a tin can

  Jagged and bleeding

  With rust the coil

  Of a small motor –

  In general the cogs and springs

  That make a world

  Tick.

  Lost

  In the

  past passing

  For a living man and all the while

  A corpse, and another week

  Gone another

  Week further away

  47

  From the past

  (groping

  for…)

  Though I can see the towns

  Are hungry how

  The buildings are thin and grey

  And I see

  windows with the light

  Glinting blankly in them

  (may they be washed clean)

  And empty auditoriums

  Littered with remains,

  And the air vents on the sky –

  Scrapers sniffi ng for clean air

  And the drains like mouths

  Grinning in the gutters

  (may

  all

  these

  too

  Be purifi ed)

  With a fi lm of oil

  Over the lips, and my hands and feet

  Throbbing in the heat,

  And hurrying to be on time but

  Too

  late

  too

  late

  too late

  too late too late

  And he woke up, and it was time

  To start searching again.

  Yellow ochre

  Cliffs of clay

  Etched by the storms

  Into strange shapes

  Like slaves

  rising from the earth,

  Salt pans where an estuary had boiled

  Dry, fl at shallows

  With fl oating scum and weird

  Spiked plants scattered

  and

  refl ections

  48

  Of dark birds in the air, and

  Sticky water

  over the eyes and

  Thirst.

  So it must have been

  In the beginning

  After the fi rst creation

  When things

  Hatched, and the pterodactyl

  Was the word.

  So it was now with Lee

  In his mind wandering

  A martyr in the sand;

  with wind

  Singing like choirs

  Of Hollywood trebles in the wings

  For the show

  down

  he

  came

  Over a ridge and there

  Like Lazarus

  rising

  above

  Dead rock

  a building (in the old style

  Called sky-scraper, a column of a

  Million pigeon-holes

  For housing all the souls

  That teem in the city);

  And upward it reared

  Into the heavens

  And the sky opened for it and

  A light shone out

  And then,

  voice breaking through

  The silence

  The

  bomb

  fell.

  49

  Marilyn Duckworth

  Thin Air

  Gulping thin air of an ecological nightmare –

  Animals mutated, the children screaming –

  She woke to the pandemonium of a still house.

  Alone now, she kicked the stiff mechanism of reassurance.

  Go back to sleep – it was only a nasty dream.

  Too late.

  She already knew the dream was certainly real.

  Not here, not now, but somewhere, some day,

  She would pick up her feet among the red insects,

  Carrying her children high on breaking shoulders,

  Trembling before the poisonous distance to safety,

  Murmuring in their little lemon coloured ears

  The reassurances she could not now, or ever

  Give to herself.

  50

  Fiona Kidman

  An aftermath

  for J.M. Coetzee

  The nightmare of the fl ood

  had left the landscape pockmarked

  and blue like the moon and then

  the looting began and the man

  wearing round spectacles made of smoke

  coloured non-refl ective

  glass walked over the pitted

  world with the woman with red

  hair that would have shone in the sun

  if there had been any left, shooting

  the looters. Angry dogs, savage

  and at loose, sprang at the couple

  of the man with the shaded eyes handed

  his pistol to the woman with red

  hair, instructing her to shoot the animals.

  When they came to me he handed

  me the pistol and instructed

  me to shoot the woman

  in the stomach. The red strands and the blue

  clay were mixed on the surface of the earth

  and it was quite clearly my fault, though

  it seemed I would be allowed

  to go without questioning.

  51

  Kevin Ireland

  Instructions About Global Warming

  for Michael Sharkey

  It all began when I suggested that

  it could be useful to talk about the weather.

  It seemed to me to be a harmless issue.

  It could not possibly disturb our friendships,

  our businesses could continue as normal

  and members of friendly communities

  would be able to join in the discussion

  without fi rst looking under their beds.

  Yet the subject turned out to be

  not quite what it might have been.

  Nearly everyone was of the same mind

  only on this one point. So it seemed politic

  to me that we should take a long break

  to see whether we could sort out some

  of the minor disagreements and put a stop

  to the anguish, mutterings and threats …

  When we returned I considered it sensible

  to wear body armour and a steel helmet,

  and to carry a riot shield. I also had to insist

  on being addressed as Sir. Someone

  had to take charge, for my audience seemed

  to have a touch of sunstroke. It was expedient

  to station guards with guns around the hall

  to protect sanity and the water supply.

  52

  The climate was a neutral subject, but if people are now going to have to be cast out to die

  for answering back about cloud formations,

  temperatures, gale
s and droughts, we must regard it

  as nature’s way of sorting out the competition.

  They ought to try not to be so damned selfi sh.

  There are variables in the sky that they are soon

  going to have to sign up to once and for all.

  53

  Altered States

  Iain Sharp

  Karen Carpenter Calls Interplanetary Craft

  Extinction nigh, desperate for warmth,

  the fuel-starved bodies of anorexics

  sprout hair brow to toe as a makeshift blanket.

  Karen clasps her furry digits and beams

  a fi nal telepathic telegram

  to cosmic rovers. Somewhere organisms

  must thrive outside the food chain, free from grub

  and shit, enduring for centuries, perhaps

  forever, and thus free from hormonal surges,

  free to say goodbye to love, except the kind

  of sibling fondness Karen feels for Richard,

  but without the prickles, without the need

  to let Richard doodle elephantine

  overtures (lest he fume or cry) before

  Karen’s silky alto cuts to the quick.

  Once she wished for an alien rescuer

  like Michael Rennie as Klaatu in The Day

  The Earth Stood Still – all brylcreemed aquiline

  superiority in his sexy lurex

  jumpsuit. But she’s gone beyond such aching,

  beyond panic, beyond rescue. She’d just like to hope

  someone in the universe has got it right –

  hairless, smooth, no mess, no odour, empowered

  joule by joule direct from a benign sun.

  57

  Gordon Challis

  The Thermostatic Man

  The world could fall to pieces any moment now; with luck it won’t, mainly because it hasn’t yet. Though cracks appear, I’ll merely count them leeway spaces left so masses may expand to meet and don’t.

  But I, who used to walk bolt upright, this day bow as meek as wheat: how can I be sure I shall not always fear to face fi erce heat, to face the sun, not watch my shadow lagging back behind,

  and feel complete?

  From strips of many metals am I made. I grow beneath the sun unevenly. I cannot cry lest the least tear should cool down one soft element and strain the others. I am bland, bend to become the thermostat which keeps my spirit burning low. One day I shall perhaps be tried by a more humble, human fi re which, blending all my elements in one alloy, will let me stand upright, ready to fall.

  58