I
A factory, the train line curving off
to cross the motorway—
between them this falling away of ground—
two or three acres where for years
the council trucks brought building rubble—
mounds of shattered concrete, brick shards,
bluestone and steel mesh overgrown with grass
and now I walk into the wreckage, its tricks of scale—
broken horizon stone, its outcrop weeds
and head-high grass, hulls frayed with light,
dry fennel stark from the mounds, dandelion,
sow-thistle the colour of barbed wire self-
seeded in wind-shale, in soft mortar at the level of my eye,
its closed array—and it is the first place, place itself
grown inward to my sight—
along the side of the house, in the playground
where dry ground slants to the fence,
out of the history of their names
where these same weeds thrive
which have made for me a heraldry
of my forgetting—Tussock rampant in field azure—
and set me here in its abyss
as though there were some vanishing point
in what we have named landscape
giving the bright scenes place—
Which is to say I have not seen it yet—
this wilderness to me which is to itself single,
closed in its processes, happening over and over
though not to itself, being to itself a storm
perpetually in the front of light—II
What is a place other than where things happen?
I met the photographer at the station and we walked out
into those scrappy grasslands
where between the train line and the gully
tyre tracks lead away into that wreckage
which was our starting place—
Who are you to me to say what I should dream?
A vault of light in which every thing appears
down to its last detail—the smell of fennel, even,
rising where we stepped over the railway line
and climbed the cutting’s side
when with single cries wrens
scattered up out of the grass—a movement
like the reverse of something breaking
or that idea of place which persists
behind its uses—self-effacing, capacious, forever
inventing a centre elsewhere—as if to say
What the future will keep of this place
will be its innocence, a hunger as undeliberate as rain—
Do you see them out there, figures among the stones
and their names for grasses?
Out in that unimaginable field
in which wrecked worlds heap their monuments—
an accumulation of fragments which only here
convert themselves into a scene—
The two of them stilled like figures on a vase—
painted Caesar smiling at the curve,
This victory I call peace and remember in stone—
Only I have vanished into my life again
the way a photographer walks off into his photographs—
- 115: SPACE
with A Sometimes
114: NO THEME 13
with J Toledo & C Tse
113: INVISIBLE WALLS
with A Walker & D Disney
112: TREAT
with T Dearborn
111: BABY
with S Deo & L Ferney
110: POP!
with Z Frost & B Jessen
109: NO THEME 12
with C Maling & N Rhook
108: DEDICATION
with L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik
107: LIMINAL
with B Li
106: OPEN
with C Lowe & J Langdon
105: NO THEME 11
with E Grills & E Stewart
104: KIN
with E Shiosaki
103: AMBLE
with E Gomez and S Gory
102: GAME
with R Green and J Maxwell
101: NO THEME 10
with J Kinsella and J Leanne
100: BROWNFACE
with W S Dunn
99: SINGAPORE
with J Ip and A Pang
97 & 98: PROPAGANDA
with M Breeze and S Groth
96: NO THEME IX
with M Gill and J Thayil
95: EARTH
with M Takolander
94: BAYT
with Z Hashem Beck
93: PEACH
with L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong
92: NO THEME VIII
with C Gaskin
91: MONSTER
with N Curnow
90: AFRICAN DIASPORA
with S Umar
89: DOMESTIC
with N Harkin
88: TRANSQUEER
with S Barnes and Q Eades
87: DIFFICULT
with O Schwartz & H Isemonger
86: NO THEME VII
with L Gorton
85: PHILIPPINES
with Mookie L and S Lua
84: SUBURBIA
with L Brown and N O'Reilly
83: MATHEMATICS
with F Hile
82: LAND
with J Stuart and J Gibian
81: NEW CARIBBEAN
with V Lucien
80: NO THEME VI
with J Beveridge
57.1: EKPHRASTIC
with C Atherton and P Hetherington
57: CONFESSION
with K Glastonbury
56: EXPLODE
with D Disney
55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUS
with M Chakraborty and K MacCarter
55: FUTURE MACHINES
with Bella Li
54: NO THEME V
with F Wright and O Sakr
53.0: THE END
with P Brown
52.0: TOIL
with C Jenkins
51.1: UMAMI
with L Davies and Lifted Brow
51.0: TRANSTASMAN
with B Cassidy
50.0: NO THEME IV
with J Tranter
49.1: A BRITISH / IRISH
with M Hall and S Seita
49.0: OBSOLETE
with T Ryan
48.1: CANADA
with K MacCarter and S Rhodes
48.0: CONSTRAINT
with C Wakeling
47.0: COLLABORATION
with L Armand and H Lambert
46.1: MELBOURNE
with M Farrell
46.0: NO THEME III
with F Plunkett
45.0: SILENCE
with J Owen
44.0: GONDWANALAND
with D Motion
43.1: PUMPKIN
with K MacCarter
43.0: MASQUE
with A Vickery
42.0: NO THEME II
with G Ryan
41.1: RATBAGGERY
with D Hose
41.0: TRANSPACIFIC
with J Rowe and M Nardone
40.1: INDONESIA
with K MacCarter
40.0: INTERLOCUTOR
with L Hart
39.1: GIBBERBIRD
with S Gory
39.0: JACKPOT!
with S Wagan Watson
38.0: SYDNEY
with A Lorange
37.1: NEBRASKA
with S Whalen
37.0: NO THEME!
with A Wearne
36.0: ELECTRONICA
with J Jones