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ARTS AND CULTURE

Odd puzzles about sexual practice

  • 24 November 2009
Going nowhere                 Some kinds of question bob up promptly           like, Is there a name for the inside elbow?              Who in fact was Bumpy Ingram?            Could there be parallel universes                and what does the question mean at all?         Are a dog's dreams really vivid?                     With a hey-diddle-diddle                 a nonny, nonny no.           Some kinds of issue offer themselves             like particles becoming waves,           where your elbows go in bed,             acceleration into a curve,               how to draw hands and especially feet,           or who was up there before God.             With a hey-diddle-diddle                 a nonny, nonny no.           Sometimes I sprawl and ask myself                why we're on this particular planet,             whether wars have any causes,            why hair fades to grey, then white,              odd puzzles about sexual practice,               and why the blue sea's abob with fish.                     Hey diddle-diddle then,                      a nonny, nonny no.             The sharpener                                Soft cedar turns against the blade       coming away in aromatic flakes. The red of a Staedtler stains each edge of these rising, falling petals and instrumental black emerges   ready to limn a comic face       or mark a pine plank     for the careful carpenter's cut,         implication drawing to   the very point. A tiny screw ensures how         the steel edge can snuggle down into its yellow plastic bed.     There. Stop now. The pencil's done.   Chris Wallace-Crabbe is a Melbourne poet, and the editor of Vincent Buckley: Collected Poems.
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