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ARTS AND CULTURE

Meeting mortality

  • 06 November 2012
Cuneiform tablet

What can no longer betouched—the aged skin, the rare,rests in a muted light, in a spotlight—

short print runs, handmade thingsin a cave of black partitions, glass echoesof the old museum and the walkthroughs

housing phosphorescent rocksin that labyrinthine place gone to angledsteel and here

the Beat poets, botanicain nineteenth-century inks, a Torah scrolland an ancient notepad of clay. The wedges

signify stock whose descendantswere skinned for the scroll under glassor for a codex named

for a mountain. On the third floorunder the State Library’s dome,by a roped-off spiral stair

the indentations in the clay recallthe press of a sharpened reed.Tablets of this size were also used

for travel inventories and sacrificiallists. They hardened in fireor sun. This palm pilot was stacked 

for burning. Framed against the darkin a precise atmosphere it is preservedunder glass. I cannot deposit my oil

in its grooves, nor weigh its matterin a glove. Three clasps hold itlike a jewel.

 Mary of Magdala

if the hunger remainsthat held herand the oldest stories do not concurshe is painted, a candle in a mirror, one handon a skull

if the book she holds—let’s not assumewe know which bookit is—openson a languageas quick as the nematodes that cling to rootsbeneath the first blanket of soilwhen the whole busy world of decomposingdark and denseis—under the rain—a welcomechain of being

if she rests against a stonewhere ants climb, intent as angelson a ladderthat inclines between earth and sky

and if all that cannot be touched falls in clumpslike spitfires on an oil-stained driveit is the beginningof a lossthat makes things possible—four treesgrow around her words—we see in iconsshe holds a flask of ointment and an egg

 Mortal life 

for Robert Adamson

This is the wildthing that turnsto loam, the seal pup

dead on the shore,a fish caughtin a crevice of rock

when the tide ebbs.The wind shakesthe cabin. The sea

is gathered in, pulled upin white snatchesthat break   over

tidal pools.There are rabbitsin the scrub, a cormorant

on the rocks. This isthe woman with unkempthair, in a room

that is forgotten.It is not a basement.It is not an attic.

She will not be consumedin a fire setby madness. It is

the priest’s holeno longer used,the bushranger’s cave,

the feel of a placethat might be men’sbusiness—if the warning

signs were known—the disorienting polis,the agora of the soul

where mortal thingsmeet, the dam where a herondips her bill.

Melbourne-based Anne Elvey holds honorary appointments at Monash University, Trinity College and MCD University of Divinity. She is author of Stolen Heath (Melbourne Poets Union, 2009), Claimed by Country (PressPress, 2010) and Bent toward