This afternoon I was going through a pile of books and found a copy of “American Civilization“, consisting of poems by the American poet, Harry Roskolenko (1907-1980). It was published in Melbourne in 1970.
Roskolenko had first come to Australia in 1943, as an American soldier, and maintained his links for the rest of his life.
Anyway, the last poem in this book is called “Australia Today” and reads as follows:
Metals, land, cattle – invest and wrest
The current colonial mime. One face brown,
Another white; a third grows greener
With American strains, dollars, images.
Tall, taller, gigantic, the corporations go…
And some things grow smaller, rotting like cliches
About Australia … and my own country.
Metals, land, cattle … buy it like whores.
The engaging face of syphilis has no God.
Lord of bauxite! Emperor of uranium’s heart!
Mt. Isa, Constance Range, Weipa, Cloncurry …
The Dead Heart will savage with American rhythms.
Sooner, later, now, tomorrow, yesterday, anytime …
A clock ticks in New York – and Canberra rewinds it.
And now in 2022, maybe the clock is automated, so that it feels absolutely natural in Canberra, and no one notices any more that it’s New York that our heartbeats are attuned to?
Beyond that, however, is the universal clock of humanity, and that’s the clock that our heartbeats need to be attuned to.
Anyway, happy Christmas and all good wishes for 2023..
Peter Curtis
27 Dec 2022