In the Blink
Drought is the story of
absences, equidistant
and everywhere—hills tawny,
baked brown as
bread, light-tilted shadows
that fall tall as
statues toppled. After the
revolution, fields lay
bare, braided in rusted metal,
mangled into
sculptures by moonlight.
Mostly, the lamentations
had subsided. A moment of
calm, but for how
long? Day and night, women
picked through
the rubble, backs hooped, bent
to the task, head to
toe dressed in black like
giant birds of prey,
shuffling amongst broken
ordnance, garments
dragging weighty as wings. An
image snapped from
a television screen in the
blink of an eye, recurrent
as nightmare, the same scene
repeated with
machine-gun rapidity; a thing
of terrible beauty.
Stephen Oliver is
the author of 17 volumes of poetry. Traveled extensively. Signed on with the
radio ship The Voice of Peace broadcasting in the
Mediterranean out of Jaffa, Israel. Free-lanced in Australia/New Zealand as production
voice, newsreader, radio producer, columnist, copy and feature writer, etc. After
20 years in Australia, currently in NZ. His latest volume, Intercolonial,
a
book-length narrative poem, published by Puriri Press, Auckland, NZ (2013). A transtasman
epic. Oliver’s work has been translated into German, Spanish, Chinese
and Dutch. Forthcoming: poetry in Ghost Fishing: An
Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology, edited by Melissa Tuckey, University of Georgia
Press, 2016. His video poem, The Great Rogatus, can be seen here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6lJ24iskxA.
