grocer's orders
Every Tuesday morning the Silvan grocer delivered last
week's order to the stove-warm hubbub of the farm kitchen;
bicarb, tartaric acid, salt, vegemite. jelly crystals, junket,
golden syrup, peanut butter, hundreds and thousands,
gravox, butter, arrowroot, sealing wax or washing soap
-and it could really be gross, John Bull rolled oats,
50 pounds of flour in calico bags, of sugar in hessian,
weeta flakes in the 50 pound cardboard carton.
in picking time the picker's orders were rung
through the Burleigh PO and brought out
in a separate box the grocer readily made
a packet up on weekly house calls
the grocer liked to look ready, his grey apron on,
a pen behind his ear and a willingness to serve.
He'd get any product Mum wanted in, taking a memo
as if he was a serious-minded politician
he'd nod his head and say: 'I'm sure we can
manage that. Yes! You're right Mrs Knoll!
I don't know what the place is coming to,
as if it mattered to him as he toted up the bill
if I was home from school
he'd say as if it wasn't obvious
"Off school sick, lad!' with deadpan delivery
'Mind you eat and get better.'
Then he would take the money
with the handwritten order
for next-week's pantry restock
and current conversation;
For all lists made as busy grocer's orders
were the only way in we ever entered his talked-of shop
as if to travel out to have such commerce would
make us ill at ease, be indignity and disgrace.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
The Green Green Bank Of Our Lives
Burbank: Green In the Bank
As budding
plant breeders we checked out Luther Burbank in our Newne's
Pictorial Encyclopedia.
For image in pictures, or vision in words.
My brother Melvyn
got youthfully excited and read it out to me
-the same Newne's Encyclo which I lately found out calls prescient
William Blake's
prophetic poems on The spirit of the West: “the ravings of a madman.”
Newnes backed Burbank, but
we knew
of Luther Burbank before we ever read about him and
he CERTAINLY didn't seem a madman to us back then. For
all our commercial plants seemed to have his touch
bramble
berries were varieties bred by him.
Everbearers!
Boysenberries, Youngberries, Loganberries,
Thornless Youngberries, Lawtonberries;
let alone nectarines, Shasta daisies
or Burbank potatoes. He was the
Mr Plant of the Universe,
Creative Botany, The Genetic Genius, and
Biological Einstein.
A Monbulk-Silvan
hero.
We knew Santa Rosa
plums and Shasta strawberries,
climax of America.
America!
It was also lately when I found
John Dos Passos’
poem biography of Burbank
-in section called "The 42 Parallel"
in his novel "U.S.A."
where he calls him
[I quote verbatim]
The Plant Wizard.
Luther Burbank was born in a brick farmhouse in Lancaster, Massachusetts,
he walked around the woods one winter
crunching through the shinycrusted snow
stumbled into a little dell where a warm spring
was
and found the grass green and weeds sprouting
and skunk cabbage pushing up a potent thumb,
He went home and sat by the stove and read
Darwin
Struggle for Existence Origin of Species Natural
Selection that wasn't what they taught in church,
so Luther Burbank ceased to believe moved to
Lunenburg,
found a seedball in a potato plant
sowed the seed and cashed in on Mr Darwin's
Natural
Selection
on Spencer and Huxley
with the Burbank Potato.
Young man go west;
Luther Burbank went to Santa Rosa
full of his dream of green grass in winter ever-
blooming flowers ever-
bearing berries; Luther Burbank
could cash in on Natural Selection Luther Bur
bank
Carried his apocalyptic dream of green grass in
winter
and seedless berries and stoneless plums and
thornless roses brambles cactus---
winters were bleak in that bleak
brick farmhouse in bleak Massachusetts---
out in sunny Santa Rosa;
and he was a sunny old man
where roses bloomed all year
everblooming everbearing
hybrids.
America was hybrid
America should cash in on Natural Selection.
He was an infidel he believed in Darwin and
Natural
Selection and the influence of the mighty dead
and a good firm shipper's fruit
suitable for canning.
He was one of the grand old men until the
churches
and the congregations
got wind that he was an infidel and believed
in Darwin.
Luther Burbank had never a thought of evil,
selecting improved hybrids for America
those sunny years in Santa Rosa.
But he brushed down a wasp's nest that time;
he wouldn't give up Darwin and Natural Selection
and they stung him and he died
puzzled.
They buried him under cedartree.
His favourite photograph
was of a little tot
standing beside a bed of hybrid
everblooming double Shasta daisies
with never a thought of evil
And Mount Shasta
in the background, used to be a volcano
but they don't have volcanos
any more.
They devalued our pound Sterling, and then decimal-minimised us,
and repainted us
global. So we
imported cheap, "Green Revolution" berries
from Turkey, Egypt, Mexico,
anywhere where labour is cheap
and the people green,
till our hybrid was
the uneconomic old hybrid
and community atomised.
And then, I realised,
the evil as an evil of our past
(the rotted-basalt krasnozem soils)
a few eons ago, Silvan
was a part of a
volcano too.
As budding
plant breeders we checked out Luther Burbank in our Newne's
Pictorial Encyclopedia.
For image in pictures, or vision in words.
My brother Melvyn
got youthfully excited and read it out to me
-the same Newne's Encyclo which I lately found out calls prescient
William Blake's
prophetic poems on The spirit of the West: “the ravings of a madman.”
Newnes backed Burbank, but
we knew
of Luther Burbank before we ever read about him and
he CERTAINLY didn't seem a madman to us back then. For
all our commercial plants seemed to have his touch
bramble
berries were varieties bred by him.
Everbearers!
Boysenberries, Youngberries, Loganberries,
Thornless Youngberries, Lawtonberries;
let alone nectarines, Shasta daisies
or Burbank potatoes. He was the
Mr Plant of the Universe,
Creative Botany, The Genetic Genius, and
Biological Einstein.
A Monbulk-Silvan
hero.
We knew Santa Rosa
plums and Shasta strawberries,
climax of America.
America!
It was also lately when I found
John Dos Passos’
poem biography of Burbank
-in section called "The 42 Parallel"
in his novel "U.S.A."
where he calls him
[I quote verbatim]
The Plant Wizard.
Luther Burbank was born in a brick farmhouse in Lancaster, Massachusetts,
he walked around the woods one winter
crunching through the shinycrusted snow
stumbled into a little dell where a warm spring
was
and found the grass green and weeds sprouting
and skunk cabbage pushing up a potent thumb,
He went home and sat by the stove and read
Darwin
Struggle for Existence Origin of Species Natural
Selection that wasn't what they taught in church,
so Luther Burbank ceased to believe moved to
Lunenburg,
found a seedball in a potato plant
sowed the seed and cashed in on Mr Darwin's
Natural
Selection
on Spencer and Huxley
with the Burbank Potato.
Young man go west;
Luther Burbank went to Santa Rosa
full of his dream of green grass in winter ever-
blooming flowers ever-
bearing berries; Luther Burbank
could cash in on Natural Selection Luther Bur
bank
Carried his apocalyptic dream of green grass in
winter
and seedless berries and stoneless plums and
thornless roses brambles cactus---
winters were bleak in that bleak
brick farmhouse in bleak Massachusetts---
out in sunny Santa Rosa;
and he was a sunny old man
where roses bloomed all year
everblooming everbearing
hybrids.
America was hybrid
America should cash in on Natural Selection.
He was an infidel he believed in Darwin and
Natural
Selection and the influence of the mighty dead
and a good firm shipper's fruit
suitable for canning.
He was one of the grand old men until the
churches
and the congregations
got wind that he was an infidel and believed
in Darwin.
Luther Burbank had never a thought of evil,
selecting improved hybrids for America
those sunny years in Santa Rosa.
But he brushed down a wasp's nest that time;
he wouldn't give up Darwin and Natural Selection
and they stung him and he died
puzzled.
They buried him under cedartree.
His favourite photograph
was of a little tot
standing beside a bed of hybrid
everblooming double Shasta daisies
with never a thought of evil
And Mount Shasta
in the background, used to be a volcano
but they don't have volcanos
any more.
They devalued our pound Sterling, and then decimal-minimised us,
and repainted us
global. So we
imported cheap, "Green Revolution" berries
from Turkey, Egypt, Mexico,
anywhere where labour is cheap
and the people green,
till our hybrid was
the uneconomic old hybrid
and community atomised.
And then, I realised,
the evil as an evil of our past
(the rotted-basalt krasnozem soils)
a few eons ago, Silvan
was a part of a
volcano too.
Nature And Rebellion
raspberry blue mould
Overripe raspberries glut into a turn
in only the third week of harvest
as daily drizzle slows any pickers
the crop begins to melt into
the ground like an ice cream
bought for you too early,
-before you could get there
the off-flavours increase in
a slur of dripping unberries
the softened fuzz of globules
changes colour till they make
blue whiskers and ducky hairdos
as rebellious as a good punk reaction
going bad in neglect in wet times.
Overripe raspberries glut into a turn
in only the third week of harvest
as daily drizzle slows any pickers
the crop begins to melt into
the ground like an ice cream
bought for you too early,
-before you could get there
the off-flavours increase in
a slur of dripping unberries
the softened fuzz of globules
changes colour till they make
blue whiskers and ducky hairdos
as rebellious as a good punk reaction
going bad in neglect in wet times.
A Dead Weight Of Lightness
the aluminium
Around 1970 it was...
the aluminium won on balance...
click-lock new pipes for the modern spray line
had to be compared
with the dead-weights of rust-poxed iron gal.
Shiny silver,
Aluminium pipes came up so light
you nearly fell over backwards to lift them.
As the aluminium arrived we each had to be
a pivot for all that surprising absence of weight,
turning the lightness like a balance beam,
raising lengths, as if gifted Hercules.
Strong! Pipe was so light you could injure
yourself with the old human strain.
Some strongmen put their back out
with a hefty clean and jerk.
Us boys lifted the two-inch easy,
simple as a tightrope walkers' beam. And balanced
them as if extruded tubes plumbed a line of truth.
Those great lengths in that broad diameter weighed so little.
We loved to demonstrate this wonder. Even with his casual talk
of pentecostal gifts granted, Dad’s new-shod boyish smiles
showed metallurgent science was more our miracle.
What looked to be heavy, wasn't.
What seemed weighty, came up light.
What seemed hard, came near too easy!
None among us even roundly guessed
the three-inch pipe could be so light,
then crush when runover, until well we knew.
Hopeful of the new world we lived, we then played
these aluminium scales on balance with no sense of parody;
Uncle Sam gave our free-world the Statue of Liberty herself.
We believed in the American dream of who we could be.
We were a moveable fulcrum to the shifting pipes
as if we could conduit that light wonder into ourselves.
The Aluminium came mint-new into the seventies,
And I can see us, as we were circa Seven-0
with the Iron Curtain of tanks still haunting Europe,
lifting pipes in this credulous miracle, as if against gravity.
Weighing a world in that balance,
it seemed a balance of power shifted
the old iron world seemed to be passe',
without grace. Who wanted that weight?
As though this free world was a source of grace,
we threw off care, let go big wanting for
that old yoke to be easy, longing to say like the sprinkler sprays:
'I want, I want, my burden to be light.'
But then, even shiny pipes had to be moved
- every shift - trailers and carrier utes built to
transport what-seemed to be light-years of pipe around,
-and driving duly hooked us teenage boys in-
all summer long in the greasy burden of elbows,
tee-pieces, end plugs, reducers, being a pipe short.
Let alone wind changes which left half a land dry and begging
a drink, so that the whole line had to be moved again.
Was it Napoletano?, the migrant peasant named
for his native Naples, who got caught out.
He farmed the creeky little strawberry place
down below our old primary school.
He was shifting into the freeworld as a spray line
out in the middle of his Australian paddock, when because
you could - or for no reason at all -except to enjoy the sheer lightness
that old iron never had, he raised the aluminium
pipe end for end, - and they were tall as masts-
and as the metal went over the vertical
it struck the forgotten
high voltage power lines which took
a surge to earth down the pipe
through him, and,
as if to aluminiumise the idea
of lightness, something went out of him...
left him a dead weight.
Wayne D Knoll
Around 1970 it was...
the aluminium won on balance...
click-lock new pipes for the modern spray line
had to be compared
with the dead-weights of rust-poxed iron gal.
Shiny silver,
Aluminium pipes came up so light
you nearly fell over backwards to lift them.
As the aluminium arrived we each had to be
a pivot for all that surprising absence of weight,
turning the lightness like a balance beam,
raising lengths, as if gifted Hercules.
Strong! Pipe was so light you could injure
yourself with the old human strain.
Some strongmen put their back out
with a hefty clean and jerk.
Us boys lifted the two-inch easy,
simple as a tightrope walkers' beam. And balanced
them as if extruded tubes plumbed a line of truth.
Those great lengths in that broad diameter weighed so little.
We loved to demonstrate this wonder. Even with his casual talk
of pentecostal gifts granted, Dad’s new-shod boyish smiles
showed metallurgent science was more our miracle.
What looked to be heavy, wasn't.
What seemed weighty, came up light.
What seemed hard, came near too easy!
None among us even roundly guessed
the three-inch pipe could be so light,
then crush when runover, until well we knew.
Hopeful of the new world we lived, we then played
these aluminium scales on balance with no sense of parody;
Uncle Sam gave our free-world the Statue of Liberty herself.
We believed in the American dream of who we could be.
We were a moveable fulcrum to the shifting pipes
as if we could conduit that light wonder into ourselves.
The Aluminium came mint-new into the seventies,
And I can see us, as we were circa Seven-0
with the Iron Curtain of tanks still haunting Europe,
lifting pipes in this credulous miracle, as if against gravity.
Weighing a world in that balance,
it seemed a balance of power shifted
the old iron world seemed to be passe',
without grace. Who wanted that weight?
As though this free world was a source of grace,
we threw off care, let go big wanting for
that old yoke to be easy, longing to say like the sprinkler sprays:
'I want, I want, my burden to be light.'
But then, even shiny pipes had to be moved
- every shift - trailers and carrier utes built to
transport what-seemed to be light-years of pipe around,
-and driving duly hooked us teenage boys in-
all summer long in the greasy burden of elbows,
tee-pieces, end plugs, reducers, being a pipe short.
Let alone wind changes which left half a land dry and begging
a drink, so that the whole line had to be moved again.
Was it Napoletano?, the migrant peasant named
for his native Naples, who got caught out.
He farmed the creeky little strawberry place
down below our old primary school.
He was shifting into the freeworld as a spray line
out in the middle of his Australian paddock, when because
you could - or for no reason at all -except to enjoy the sheer lightness
that old iron never had, he raised the aluminium
pipe end for end, - and they were tall as masts-
and as the metal went over the vertical
it struck the forgotten
high voltage power lines which took
a surge to earth down the pipe
through him, and,
as if to aluminiumise the idea
of lightness, something went out of him...
left him a dead weight.
Wayne D Knoll
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)