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Sydney A kookaburra’s blubbering laugh Skids above the gumtrees’ lean, Shards of light rekindling Harbour’s blue acetylene.   And blossoms large as bruises fall In supplication where a swirl Of wings divide this limping air, Cresting over beaches’ foil,   Roundabouts of coastal wrap, Sandstone blocks and bitumen, Miles of terracotta roofs Sloped to sheer oblivion.   Flesh abrades in shower and bed Geographies for loving, Hillside muscles slumped On salted sheets’ revisions.   Cockatoo headline of Opera House sails Flashes its crest near the Quay As night’s shenanigans up at the Cross Dwindle to weak cups of tea.   Pulseline of buildings mortgages trains Where Heralds flap into position, Row upon row of white collars creased, Timetables laughed at by larrikins.   Westwards to afternoon, reaching at bush, Grids sweat time from the crowd, Circling emerald’s eucalypt swash Stroking sunset down.   Then, past backyards, over the mountains, Images float to the brain, Tethered by dreaming in suburbs Beside the Pacific’s black sheen.

Photograph accompanying excerpt from the poem ‘Sydney’, written 1993, used in limited edition booklet given to guests by the Lord Mayor at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, showing Triathlon swim leg, Bennelong Point, Sydney Harbour

TITLES and FIRST LINES

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Anna Bemrose Robert Helpmann A servant of art University of Queensland Press
2008  ‘et je danse’ p. 312, written 1986, first published Such Sweet Thunder  1994, p. 39

NOTES

NB References work published between 1967 and 1997 and CAKC 2002
Australian History Lesson
The poet Christopher Brennan (1870-1932) was Associate Professor in German and Comparative Literature at the University of Sydney until 1925. Brennan's poetic technique owes something to the French Symbolists, one of whom, Mallarmé, Brennan corresponded with.
 
Metamorphosis
The poet Francis Webb (1925-1973) died at Rydalmere Hospital, Sydney.
 
Tribute
The poet, critic and intellectual James McAuley (1917-1976)  espoused a conservative, classicist poetic. With Harold Stewart he engineered the Ern Malley hoax poems, The Darkening Ecliptic, a cause célèbre in Australian literary history.
 
Années de Pèlerinage
Patrick White, novelist, short story writer and dramatist
 
Nuclear Nightmare
Shine! shine! shine!: Walt Whitman, 'Sea-Drift'
 
While The Billy Boils
On November 11, 1975 the Whitlam Labor government was dismissed from office by the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, precipitating an unprecedented constitutional crisis.
Maralinga brightness in the sky: Maralinga, in South Australia, was the site of joint Anglo-Australian nuclear tests which included above-ground explosions.
 
Adelaide Festival 1984
Among many events at the 1984 Adelaide Festival of the Arts, the Philharmonia under the direction of Vladimir Ashkenazy played Beethoven's nine symphonies, the Grupo de Teatro Macunaima presented Mário de Andrade's Macunaima and the State Opera of South Australia performed Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District.
The previous year bushfires, designated the Ash Wednesday fires, devastated parts of Victoria and South Australia, including the Adelaide Hills.
 
Asking Auden
Chester, Igor, Rhoda: Chester Kallman, Igor Stravinsky, Rhoda Jaffe
 
In Celebration
Margaret Sutherland, Australian composer; Grace Cossington Smith, Australian painter;
Dame Joan Sutherland, Australian opera singer, 'La Stupenda'
 
Rehearsal
When his heroine died a dead duck: premiere of La Traviata, a fiasco
 
Lunch At Centrepoint
This poem was written at a time when the Kanak Melanesians were agitating for an independent New Caledonia. At the top of Centrepoint Tower in Sydney there is a revolving restaurant with views to the ocean.
 
And The Winner Is . . .
After the night of the hummingbird’s plunder: a reference to the Night of the Long Knives, the Nazi SS putsch against the SA, codenamed Operation Hummingbird
Will the Timorese greet me, / Tasmanians cheer me? / (I mean the original, those Aboriginal): Indonesia annexed East Timor in 1976. There is disagreement as to why the Aboriginal population of Tasmania declined so precipitously during the nineteenth century.
 
Figures In A Landscape
In Utzon's white rinds: Jørn Utzon, Danish architect of the Sydney Opera House
But you'd still like to see / A Ring on the stage: fulfilled December 2004, Adelaide, State Opera of South Australia; first staging of an Australian production
And remember Andrea's voice: Andrea (Dorothea Gordon Jenner) was a popular Sydney radio personality during the 1950s and 1960s.
 
Bienvenue à Boom Boom
France exploded atmospheric (until 1974) and below-ground nuclear devices at Moruroa Atoll despite vociferous objections by the South Pacific nations. Testing has since ceased.
 
Absolutely No Extensions Possible
the sun, the sun—: Oswald Alving at the end of Ghosts, Henrik Ibsen
 
Tooth And Claw
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 'In Memoriam: A.H.H.'  'Nature, red in tooth and claw'
 
Thou Swell
Lorenz Hart, American lyricist A Connecticut Yankee 'Thou Swell' 'Thou swell! Thou witty! / Thou sweet! Thou grand!'
Your heart was frail, /  A ship without a sail: Head's Up 'A Ship Without A Sail' 'Why is my heart so frail / Like a ship without a sail?'
But tender was your night: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is The Night, from Keats, 'Ode To A Nightingale'
 
Ascent
Pippa passes: see 'Song' from Robert Browning, Pippa Passes, 'God's in his Heaven– /  All's right with the world!'
 
et je danse
Arthur Rimbaud, Les Illuminations Xll ‘Phrases’
Though it was checkmate in the patient’s bed: Checkmate was written at the request of Sadler’s Wells Ballet for the first appearance of the company in Paris in 1937, music Arthur Bliss, choreography Ninette de Valois. Helpmann danced in the original production. It was also the last ballet in which he appeared, The Australian Ballet, May, 1986.
Helpmann was Margot Fonteyn’s first significant dancing partner.
Sir Robert Helpmann, dancer, choreographer and actor 1909–1986
 
Official Secrets
Sol Invictus: Roman cult of sun worship, begun under Aurelius, later adapted to Christianity
Under the weasels and whales of clouds: Hamlet  III. II
Hamlet Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?
Polonius By th' mass, and 'tis: like a camel, indeed.
Hamlet Methinks it is like a weasel.
Polonius It is backed like a weasel.
Hamlet Or like a whale.
Polonius Very like a whale.
 
Prometheus
Gentleness, virtue, wisdom and endurance: taken from Shelley, Prometheus Unbound, Act lV
 
Black
In 1988 Australia celebrated its bicentenary of white settlement.
Uluru: Aboriginal sacred site; formerly Ayers Rock
 
New Year Retro
When handshakes prospered, for a moment, peace: the Gorbachev–Reagan summit in Reykjavík, Iceland
 
Owed To Feral Face
Semtex: odourless plastic explosive used by terrorists
 
Rock Face
I am I am I am, / A white flag on the horizon.: S. T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria 'The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition of the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM.'; in the medieval Tristan legend the white flag was the signal of rescue
 
Short Prayer
The Armenian earthquake, December 7, 1988, resulted in the deaths of 25 000 people.
 
A Definition
When the gold myrtle wreath: This wreath was displayed as part of the exhibition Ancient Macedonia which was loaned by the Greek government as a gesture of goodwill to Australia for its Bicentenary in 1988. The Vergina tomb artefacts, including this wreath, have undergone extensive research as to their provenance since their discovery by Manolis Andronikos.
just like Johnny, / It’ll be back, grinning: Jack Torrance in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining which itself references Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show

Now, Voyager
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass 'The untold want, by life and land ne'er granted, /  Now, Voyager, sail thou forth to seek and find.'
 
Anton Bruckner
This prose poem refers to a performance of Anton Bruckner's Eighth Symphony given by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Stuart Challender in the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House.
 
Great Attractor
Some scientists have postulated the existence of a Great Attractor whose immense gravitational force would eventually absorb all matter.
 
What's Up, Doc?
Mel Blanc (Melvin Blank), voice actor who worked for Warner Bros. and Hanna–Barbera, responsible for voice characterisations of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Tweety Pie among many others
 
New Affection, New Noise
Arthur Rimbaud, Les Illuminations  Vlll 'Départ' 'Départ dans l'affection et le bruit neufs!'
 
An Answer
See Emily Dickinson's letter to Dr and Mrs J. G. Holland written in the summer of 1862?:
'Perhaps you laugh at me! Perhaps the whole United States are laughing at me too! I can't stop for that! My business is to love.'
 
The Clouded Sky Is Now Serene
W. S. Gilbert, H.M.S. Pinafore ‘Oh joy, oh rapture unforeseen, / The clouded sky is now serene.’

Timor Gap
Written when Australia and Indonesia signed the Timor Gap Treaty, a division of oil resources in the Timor Sea.
Garuda: ancient Indian mythological creature, devourer of serpents and king of the birds; Indonesia’s national airline
Merdeka: Indonesian struggle for independence from the Dutch

Tutors
Amherst, Arles, Bayreuth: dwelling places of Emily Dickinson, Vincent van Gogh and Richard Wagner

A Lecture
The solution was simple: strangle your wife.: The French philosopher Louis Althusser strangled his wife Helene in their apartment at the École normale supérieure on November 16, 1980.
Stuckist complicity: artists aesthetically ‘stuck’ in outmoded styles of expression
landscapes of Williams: Fred Williams, Australian landscape painter

Further
tyrannies / Of instance tossed: see Geoffrey Blainey, The Tyranny of Distance

This Birth
Eve van Grafhorst (1982–1993) contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion. Subsequently, she left her pre-school in New South Wales and settled with her family in New Zealand.

Appointment
Memphis in myth-mist: temperature inversions sometimes shroud Sydney in mists, giving the city an otherworldly appearance

Zero At The Bone
Emily Dickinson, 986 ‘A narrow Fellow in the Grass’; last line, ‘And Zero at the Bone—’

Big Orange Sunset
The title comes from one of Brett Whiteley’s paintings, Big Orange (sunset). Australian artists Brett Whiteley (1939–1992); Sir Sidney Nolan (1917–1992)

This Sporting Life
Australian rules: Australian Rules Football, a game distinct from league, union or soccer, first developed and played in the nineteenth century.

Larkin Land
A fifty-dollar lettered life / Can’t give you all the facts: W. H. Auden, ‘Who’s Who’ ‘A shilling life will give you all the facts.’
‘Final Annex’ In A Writer’s Life (Faber and Faber, 1993) Andrew Motion describes Larkin’s collapse, shortly before his death, in a downstairs lavatory, his face pressed against central heating bars.

XXVll Olympiad
Sydney Olympic Games September 15–October 1, 2000
Dreamtime: Aboriginal time of the creation of all things when ancestor spirits came to Earth in human and other forms
Southern Cross: star constellation in the Southern Hemisphere; part of the Australian flag

Intervista
Federico Fellini, Italian auteur; his penultimate film was Intervista (1987)
Giulietta’s eyes: Giulietta Masina, Italian actor, Fellini’s wife

Begin In Gladness
See Wordsworth, ‘Resolution and Independence’, ‘We Poets in our youth begin in gladness; / But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.’

Truth
: Is something rich and strange: The Tempest  I. II
Ariel   Nothing of him that doth fade
          But doth suffer a sea-change
          Into something rich and strange.

Dedication
Friedrich Rückert, ‘Widmung’ from Robert Schumann’s song cycle Myrten Op. 25

Condemned At Kangaroo Court
Taking its motto from a Greek aphorism—Zóë moû, sàs agapô—My life, I love you— wailed by Psychocat at the climax of the final trial scene, Condemned At Kangaroo Court portrays the journey of I and his unique double, the Poet, through a series of hallucinogenic psychic spaces. An unseen Mystical Chorus comments cryptically on what happens throughout. I and the Poet eventually liberate themselves from what appears to be a terminal judgment on their aspirations by Grillmaster and the three Enigma judges.
 
Here the emphasis is on the codependence of the poetic and real worlds—the imaginative and sensuous apprehension of the Poet and the physical and intellectual burden of the nameless I, who could be anyone or everyone, male or female, liberal or conservative.
 
Scene 1 'Sing 'em muck and make a million': 'Sing 'em muck! It's all they can understand!'
Advice purportedly given by Dame Nellie Melba to Clara Butt prior to an Australian tour.
 
the waltz from Carousel,
floating with Lemminkainen above the hellish lake,
banging in each of those Nine Inch Nails: respectively, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, the musical Carousel; Jean Sibelius, The Swan of Tuonela; rock group, lead singer Trent Reznor
 
Scene 3 Gone through a megamix boatload of snow: snow Colloq. cocaine
Ella, Billy, Dusty—they are just history: Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Dusty Springfield
unless like poor old Dylan, whisky-sailing: Dylan Thomas
 
Scene 7 'Viva Emmanuel Re d'Italia': more correctly,'Viva Victor Emmanuel Re d'Italia', Risorgimento street cry during the Italian struggle for independence
 
Scene 8 to all who haven't found the proper use for butter: Bernardo Bertolucci, Last Tango In Paris
 
Scene 9 'I have a dream . . .' Martin Luther King, Jr., Lincoln Memorial, August 28, 1963
 
Scene 10 he settles back down to re-read Krafft-Ebing: Baron Richard von Krafft-Ebing,
Psychopathia Sexualis, collection of psychiatric case histories
  Three little maids from school are we: Gilbert and Sullivan, The Mikado
  My stardust melody: Nat King Cole, Stardust
  Cleanse the foul body of the infected world . . . Jacques, As You Like It, II. VII
  What a piece of work is a . . .: What a piece of work is a man! Hamlet, Hamlet II. II 
 
Scene 12  ‘. . . the last full measure of devotion.’: Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg address
November 19, 1863
  ‘Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibur ultor.’ Virgil, May some avenger arise from my bones.
  ‘Der Historiker ist ein rückwärts gekehrter Prophet.’ Schlegel, The historian is a prophet looking backwards.
 
Scene 13 ‘Il est indigne des grand coeurs de répandre le trouble qu'ils ressentent.'
Clotilde de Vaux, ‘It is unworthy of great hearts to pour out the confusion they feel.’

Reichstag, Berlin 2002

VOCABULARY and PLACE NAMES

NB References work written between 1967 and 2006
acre   though Australia had adopted metrication by the nineteen- 
seventies, many writers still find Imperial usages appropriate—
inch, foot, mile, penny, shilling, pound, ounce etc.
 

 PHOTOGRAPHS and DOCUMENTS