Between Glances
Andrew Lansdown
William Heinemann Australia (Port Melbourne), 1993
ISBN 0-85561-517-6
Back cover blurb
“Lansdown uses words with masterly precision to paint things as we have not previously seen them, but as we may be tempted to see them henceforth.”
Rod Moran, Fremantle Arts Review
“At his best Lansdown is able to suggest very deftly and concisely the so-called ‘thisness’ of things …”
Geoff Page, Canberra Times
“No Australian poet is so often moved to celebrate as Andrew Lansdown is. His work brims with tenderness, wonder and joy, all qualities which are in short supply in the modern world of which he is an acute observer. Beneath his gaze common objects and every-day encounters glow with spiritual significance. Lansdown has few superiors as a technician: his use of sound in these poems is as striking as is their variety of form. This, his sixth and strongest collection, will enhance his growing reputation.”
Les Murray
Six poems from Between Glances
Between Glances
It is a liquidambar, the tree
I planted two months ago
beside my study. Green and
leafy then, it is almost bare
now. A little twiggy thing.
One red leaf flutters from it
like a child’s hand. For a week
it has been waving to me,
wanting my attention, trying
to tell me something unknown
to eucalypts and evergreens.
Something European or Japanese.
Something sad and deciduous.
That brave beautiful leaf,
beckoning the eyes as a flame
beckons the palms. All day
it has warmed me. Exquisite,
that small wind-chafed hand,
its familiar flutter. I glance
down at my work then out
again, only to find it gone.
Gone between glances. If only
I had known that last wave
was a goodbye, a farewell,
I would not have looked away.
© Andrew Lansdown
The Colour of Life
Why is it that here in this cafe,
a hard wind harmless on the window,
a bright fire coughing in the grate,
scones and tea on the table, I feel
suddenly, strangely sad? Why is it,
and what? A loneliness, a longing—
not, it seems, in spite of, but
because of, the loveliest of things.
It is the colour of life. Sabi
the haiku poets would say. I say
too much. I break a scone and steam
wafts from the wound, like
the spirit of a just man, going home.
© Andrew Lansdown
Sunshower
The sun is shining yet rain
is falling. Light rain,
like splinters of light,
floating down. Straight down,
no wind to waft it about.
Looking at the trees is like
looking through a faintly
scratched sheet of perspex.
Two children, not mine,
are running through the forest.
© Andrew Lansdown
Sonnet of Thanksgiving
I wake, draw the curtains and am suddenly aware
that He is profligate, our God, giving us more
than we need, more than we ever dream to ask for.
Through the window on this winter morning, there
beside my house, the forest is faint with mist.
The white trees are like women standing half-seen
in a sauna. The bushes where the spiders have been
are strewn with ornaments for throat and wrist:
necklaces, bracelets strung with diamonds. A stark
and startling wealth, this jewellery the women
have put off. They stand in silent communion:
unadorned, white, bar the occasional birthmark.
And then in the stillness, the whiteness, the swirl,
a lone bird call. It hangs on the ear like a pearl.
© Andrew Lansdown
Rhyme
I sing a rhyme for my daughter
of a teapot short and stout.
She mimes a clumsy kettle,
crooks a handle, points a spout.
The world is wide with danger,
my life is dark with doubt,
but a child commands me sweetly,
Come on Daddy, dance and shout!
Sometimes I sense my children
have turned my life about.
They top me up with gladness,
tip me over, pour me out.
© Andrew Lansdown
The Muff Bees
My daughter called them “muff bees”,
mistaking them for moths that sting.
But apart from the beauty of her name,
I had thought they were merely ugly,
the March flies, with their blowfly
bodies and cicada wings, their
bulging eyes and long proboscises.
They look like homunculi in gas masks
or bug-eyed children with straws
in their mouths. With those inflexible
trunks, they are tiny winged elephants,
the Dumbos of the insect world.
In the shade of a karri one autumn
I swatted dozens of the suckers
as they came for the blood
that happened to be in my legs. It was
a slaughter. It was a satisfaction.
Inspecting their bodies, I found the pests
guilty of ugliness, their iridescent-
green eyes compounding their crime.
But this afternoon I saw one
hovering in a shaft of sunlight,
its body buoyant, its wings burring,
its proboscis protruding in exact
proportion to its other parts
and angled exquisitely
according to the tilt of the head.
It was like a humming bird.
It was, without a murmur, a muff bee.
© Andrew Lansdown