(i)
The plates were buried in the earth
Under the old Queenslander:
Bruised in time.
How easily we forget
The deep connectedness
Of the early modern world.
Men and women tramped its tropes
Setting in train
Their own wild epics.
Northwards to the old world
To sing, to write
To paint, to act, to teach
Doused in the ink
Of the adventurous émigré
And lost to our own portrayals.
(ii)
While Menzies knelt in stasis
You designed for English theatres.
Your father, the migrant Croat
Was caught at his benediction:
Framed in religious peace
As he read the pilgrim’s book.
That portrait
Lay buried in the earth
Like a spectral offering
Waiting to be surfaced again
On the inked rollers
Of that washing room mangle.
(iii)
In this ancient land
Without effort
The earth stores its secrets
The wanderer returns
Known and not known
His work and worth confounded
The tendrils of recognition
Bested by the earth:
No laurels for the prodigal son.
(iv)
Without alarm
The splendour of Venus
Burdens each pilgrim:
Votive to the quest
Seeking patterns of perfection
Within creation’s dogged ache
At home in the studio
At home in the longing and desire
That Apollo whispers ceaselessly.
That etching in the soil
Retrieved, revived
Hangs on my bedroom wall
Almost one hundred years
Since you scratched into life
Its dark repose.
Not forgotten
The earth held your treasures safe.
Your father long dead
You departed
Your strong lines
Still energize the nighttime air
Like the migrant songlines
That haunt this settler world
Like the billet doux
That art forever sources
Like the memory of creation
Distilled in time:
The earth saved your story.
August 2020
Gar Jones
https://www.daao.org.au/bio/vincent-brown/biography/