Writing a new sonnet ('In the know') for a sequence: 'Salve'

Establishing the Eastern Suburbs Art Group functions as a kind of watershed in combination with the production of paramontages. The latter dates from the end of April the former from mid-July. This month I went back to ‘Salve’ and added a new sonnet, the last one having been written for the sequence in the middle of 2021, a poem titled ‘Arrival’ in which I talk about moving to the new house.

It seems that the new house, and my plans for making art, are central to the artistic process. I remember meeting with the estate agents at the place in Beaconsfield and praising the property but adding that I wanted a studio. At that point they asked me if I wanted to see a place in Botany where the owner was building homes for his family.

‘Arrival’ also mentions friends, and Esag complements its convivial push, somehow all this has resulted in the creation this morning of ‘In the know’.

The shadows that we build our childhoods on
race tremendous against a frothy track
the walk to the bus-stop, the horizon,
the wind from yesterday pressing our back

or a segment on the evening news
about tiger cubs born two months ago
reminding me why we need bloody zoos
and infill development. We would do

so much more to care for the fragile light
but are dissuaded by the shame and fear.
We compensate with the play and the fight
of politics and sport because they’re near

the rightness of the dark patch by the kerb,
the formidable noun, the struggling verb.

In ‘Salve’ there are sections and ‘In the know’ sits in ‘The city’, with the poem coming before it having been written over several years (25 February 2017, 2 December 2020, 11 August 2021, 3 and 28 July 2022), it’s titled ‘Guardians of the city’ and it talks about the Pyrmont apartment where, living there, I’d hear birds call out and cars race up the street. In the distance the buildings of the central business district like evidence of permanence in the fact of settlement.

Somehow moving away from the city into a larger house has freed me of a burden, or maybe it’s just that I don’t notice the aeroplanes taking off like I used to do the automobiles charging up Bowman Street. I think it’s the space, the staircase, the capacity given also by having gotten past the silent trauma of mum’s death.

It took me about 18 months to recover some equilibrium after the fact, I’ve got photos I took of me sitting at my desk overlooking the city with its lines of concrete buildings, each face slightly different, perhaps I’ll use them one day along with a poem about drinking, for I gave up the booze three years ago, I don’t regret the loss for an instant it makes my life so much simpler not having to worry about getting into trouble, I can jump in the car at any time without a qualm.