In the cemetery this sun-bathed afternoon

noiselessly I tread on Autumn grass.

Natural covered earth between the graves

lies open, undisturbed by spreading roots

of sugar gums.  Pure blue, filtered unstirring

through grey leaves, lifts calm space.

With time frayed opposites are joined,

ancestors, pioneers, under common ground,

the sky, fruits and bark, dried leaves,

obstinately insist on being one.

My father’s mother, judge of a book by a glance

inside, sews on our verandah.  Her seeing eye

cuts comfort into petticoats, kimonos,

fancy dress for me.  The protester

my mother, measures sleeves, unpicks, re-sews.

Grandmother’s friend the banker

shot by Squizzy Taylor’s mob, dies

in the quick-stitched final request:

a pair of Ma’s incomparably soft pyjamas.

A scorching Christmas day we eat at the home farm:

my mother’s sisters and the solitary Carl,

husbands Otto, Herman, Gottlieb, Fritz.

In a thatched kitchen full of warm coffee cake

Uncle Julius fishes in Encyclopaedia Brittanica,

shares the catch.  These season my living space.

Eight infants listed on an obelisk

take me to the Lutheran Church eight times:

Prayers, slow hymns, long sermon, farewells.

Dirt, wrong blood, T.B., bad luck?

A grave re-opens the story of a buggy

wrapped in homegoing fog.  Horses

frightened by sudden train noises, pull up

on the lines.  Cousin Maire, thrown

across the engine, rides to the station.

Cousin Clara’s whispered shocking wounds,

passions remembered and forgotten,

harshness received and given long ago,

hold me in quiet, redeemed Wimmera earth.

Joyce Lee

from Collected Poems 1965 – 2003

Artist’s Proof, April 2003