Personal Choice 18
Lifesaver
He was brought up out of the sea,
His tall body dead.
He was carried shoulder high
Between the sea and the sky.
The sun and the water trembled down
From his fingers and from the brown
Valley between his shoulders; and the spray
Fell before him as he passed on his way.
His eyes were dead, and his lips
Closed on death, and his hands
Cold with death. He is one now with ships
And the bones of pirate bands
Steeped in salt and knavery.
One with fish and weed and pearl
And the long lonely beat
Of the waves that curl
On shell and rock and sand
Of a deep drowned land.
He was carried shoulder high
Up the alleys of the sun;
And the heat
Washed him over from his head to his feet,
But you cannot give the body back breath
With a flagon full of sun.
He is drowned, the tall one.
Has him by the throat
On the sand, in the sun.
Elizabeth Riddell
Elizabeth Riddell (1910 - 1998) was an Australian poet and journalist. Born in Napier, New Zealand, Elizabeth Riddell came to Australia in 1928 where she worked at Smith's Weekly and won a Walkley Award. In 1935 she moved to England. Her first short book of poems, The Untrammelled, was published in 1940. After the war she returned to Australia to continue working as a journalist, and in the 1960s became art critic and feature writer for The Australian. She was the first Walkley Award winner for The Australian, winning in 1968 and 1969 for 'Best Newspaper Feature Story'. In 1986 she was awarded Critic of the Year by the Australian Book Review. Riddell's poetry won the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry in 1992 and the Patrick White Award in 1995.
One of my favourite ‘teaching’ poems especially when wanting to introduce students to metaphor and personification (the representation of an abstract quality in human form), consider the eerie and wonderful:
Thin brother Death
Has him by the throat
On the sand, in the sun.
Commenti