WOOLWICH ARSENAL, 1915
beyond
what passes for amusement
here
the none-too-subtle
pound-of-flesh Jacobeans
the penny-dreadfuls of the belle epoque
beyond
tart whispers of equipages
and of the leaching of manners
by the modern diktat
of the mess hall queue
and the Zeppelin’s feline shadow
beyond
the knuckles of sulphurous fog
in the estuaries
beyond
the sly mockery of a porpoise
painted on the pub shingle
casting its blind eye
over the rotting hulks
of the musselmen
bobbing on the poison tide
DAWSON CITY
I knew prairie cold that never really left me
I knew fingers of ice clutching the panes
the fire refracted there I knew
from the centre of a room whose every inch
and every dark dusty crevice I knew
I knew the baying of the wolves at the solstice
and the ewes kicking in their pens I knew
like the cough of a pick in the frozen ground
I knew the mute plea of the milky sun
bound to those bare distant hills bleeding gold in the dawn
I knew the flicker of prospector’s fires in the leeward crags
the owl’s lament I knew all too well
the chilblains it sang of through the nights of fever
when the room filled with a chattering horde
taking turns to run their bony fingers
down the length of my one thin blanket
their pity I knew and the soft parade
of their faces in the snow drifts
days too short to be worth counting I knew
and nights that are still inside me
Justin Lowe is a poet, editor and occasional reviewer who lives in the Blue Mountains. His seventh poetry collection of poetry is The Picketer (2019). He is published internationally, including in Meanjin, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Cortland Review. He edits poetry blog Bluepepper and has had poems put to music by The Whitlams and The Impossibles.