eddie burrup
some responses to the storm...
the artist
photo © courtesy Robert Garvey
PETIT TESTAMENT
In the eightieth year of my age
I found myself to be a dromedary
That had run short of water between
One oasis and the next mirage
And having despaired of ever
Making my obsessions intelligible
I was content at last to become
The sole clerk of my metamorphoses
I who have lived in the shadow that each act
Casts on the next now emerged
And seizing the coordinates of all existence
Traced the inevitable graph
The nightmare has become real, not as belief
But in the scrub-typhus of Mabo
It is something at least to be speaking
Though in this No-Man's-language appropriate
Only to No-Man's-Land
Begin here
[Elizabeth Durack 1998 — with due acknowledgement to the immortal Ern Malley]