#kenneth slessor

[paracosm-escapism]

[slidesworthseeing]

Found slide: John Olsen’s ‘Salute to Five Bells’, Sydney Opera House concert hall, Gadigal country, slide developed April 1974. In memory of John Olsen 1928-2023

[thewondermentofillustration]

Norman Lindsay (1879 – 1969) - Adventure Bay, poem by Kenneth Slessor

Sophie’s my world - my arm must soon or later

Like Francis Drake Turn circumnavigator

Stem the dark tides, take by the throat strange gales

And toss their spume to stars unknown, as kings

Rain diamonds to the mob - then arch my sails

By water-spouts of lace and bubbling rings

Gulfed in deep satin, conquer those warmer waves

Where none but mermaids ride, and the still caves

Untrod by sailors - aye, and with needle set,

Rounding Cape Turnagain, take up my way,

And so to the Ivory Coast - and farther yet,

Port of all drowned lovers, Adventure Bay!

             -- Kenneth Slessor

[svenson777]

At last I know—it’s on old ivory jars,

Glassed with old miniatures and garnered once with musk.  

I’ve seen those eyes like smouldering April stars

As carp might see them behind their bubbled skies

In pale green fishponds—they’re as green your eyes,  

   As lakes themselves, changed to green stone at dusk.

At last I know—it’s paned in a crystal hoop  

On powder-boxes from some dead Italian girl,

I’ve seen such eyes grow suddenly dark, and droop  

Their small, pure lids, as if I’d pried too far  

In finding you snared there on that ivory jar

   By crusted motes of rose and smoky-pearl.

~

KENNETH SLESSOR

"New Magic"

Source:

Kenneth Slessor: Collected Poems (Angus & Robertson, 1992).

[gilgai]

Kenneth Slessor, page from notebook containing notes and drafts of poems, including ‘Five Bells’, c. 1930s, National Library of Australia, nla.obj-223762587.

For more on Slessor, Lynch and Five Bells see “The Life and Death of Joe Lynch” by Lindsay Foyle, Quadrant Online, 01 Oct 2012.

[studitiious]

1 / 100 days of productivity

april 1st 2017

one more week until easter holidays, and subsequently one month until my half yearly exams. better starting sooner than later! 

[ukdamo]

Nuremberg

Kenneth Slessor

So quiet it was in that high, sun-steeped room, So warm and still, that sometimes with the light Through the great windows, bright with bottle-panes, There’d float a chime from clock-jacks out of sight, Clapping iron mallets on green copper gongs.

But only in blown music from the town’s Quaint horologe could Time intrude . . . you’d say Clocks had been bolted out, the flux of years Defied, and that high chamber sealed away From earthly change by some old alchemist.

And, oh, those thousand towers of Nuremberg Flowering like leaden trees outside the panes: Those gabled roofs with smoking cowls, and those Encrusted spires of stone, those golden vanes On shining housetops paved with scarlet tiles!

And all day nine wrought-pewter manticores Blinked from their spouting faucets, not five steps Across the cobbled street, or, peering through The rounds of glass, espied that sun-flushed room With Dürer graving at intaglios.

O happy nine, spouting your dew all day In green-scaled rows of metal, whilst the town Moves peacefully below in quiet joy . . . O happy gargoyles to be gazing down On Albrecht Dürer and his plates of iron!

[nudeartpluspoetry]

Short Poems by Three Modern Australian Poets