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All for you

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            — Why does it always come to this!             — It’s all for you, honoured one.                                                                            Record of Dongshan 98                                          The music is a house of glass standing on a slope;                                          rocks are flying, rocks are rolling.                                          The rocks roll straight through the house                                          but every pane of glass is still whole.                                                                                                Tomas Tranströmer, ‘Allegro’ In the netted garden, fruit disappears in the night. T sets up the camera there to see who’s eating the plums – it records rat selfies, whiskery faces peering into the lens. Out in the paddocks, white cockatoos finish the walnuts and come for the hazels. But there are blackberries enough for everyone, some of them plump where bushes have found water
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Inside

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From under his fingernail [the water-god] Enki brought forth dirt. He fashioned the dirt into a kurgarra, a creature neither male nor female. From under the fingernail of his other hand he brought forth dirt. He fashioned the dirt into a galatur, a creature neither male nor female. … Enki spoke to the kurgarra and galatur, saying: "Go to the underworld, enter the door like flies. Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Underworld, is moaning with the cries of a woman about to give birth.” … The kurgarra and the galatur heeded Enki's words. They set out for the underworld. Like flies, they slipped through the cracks of the gates. They entered the throne room of the Queen of the Underworld. No linen was spread over her body. Her breasts were uncovered. Her hair swirled around her head … Ereshkigal was moaning: "Oh! Oh! My inside!" They moaned: "Oh! Oh! Your inside!" … Ereshkigal stopped. She looked at them. She asked: "Who are you, moaning … sighing with me? If you
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Whole

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                                        when Newton’s apple fell toward the earth,                                         the earth, ever so slightly, fell                                         toward the apple as well.                                                                                                Ellen Bass                                         Everything that happens                                         will happen and none of us will be safe from it.                                         Pull up anchors. Sit close to the god of night.                                                                                                                                 Ellen Kort Days are getting warmer. Tractors with mowers, tractors with rakes, tractors with balers bounce along roads, through paddocks, capturing and rolling up the hay crop with a rhythmic thump that sounds through the valley like a heartbeat. The ground is suddenly rock-hard, and the cows carry th
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Stone

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                       The stone woman gives birth in the middle of the night.                                                                                Attributed to Dongshan (Tung-shan)                       The mother of the Xia was Tushanshi, the Lady of Mount Tu.                        One day she turned herself to stone, and the stone split open                       to give birth to a child whose name was Revelation.                                                                                                                      Joan Sutherland Four hens go broody at the same time – mesmerised, they settle into their chosen spots and sit – two in the henhouse, one in the hayshed, one deep in a patch of tradescantia under the pear tree. We bring in some eggs from a different flock – araucanas (blue shells!), australorps, barnevelders – and J puts four under each hen. They bring out ten chickens between them – some eggs are infertile, some chicks don’t make it out of the s
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Complex

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       A fierce wind blew the ship off course and set it drifting toward the land of the flesh-eating demons.          Entangling Vines , Case 39        Cultural complexes structure emotional experience and operate in the personal and collective psyche        in much the same way as individual complexes … [they] tend to be repetitive, autonomous,        resist consciousness and collect experience that confirms their historical point of view.         Thomas Singer        I have this nagging idea that at each major site something aberrant … happened and        a cultural liberation converted to a cultural complex.         Craig San Roque        [The etak navigational system is not a birds-eye view, but] occupies a “real point of view        on the real local space” and envisions everything else – stars, islands, reference objects –        only as it exists in relation to the viewer. Thus, “the star bearings of the etak island radiate out        from the navigator himself” and cannot be t
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Days of the dead

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                                   After every war                                    someone has to clean up.                                    Things won’t                                    straighten themselves up, after all.                                    Someone has to push the rubble                                    to the side of the road,                                    so the corpse-filled wagons                                    can pass.                                    Someone has to get mired                                    in scum and ashes,                                    sofa springs,                                    splintered glass,                                    and bloody rags.                                    Someone has to drag in a girder                                    to prop up a wall.                                    Someone has to glaze a window,                                    rehang a door.                       
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Where have you been?

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                                 The darkling way, the bird path, the open hand.                                                                            The Record of Dongshan In the first few days of the month, pallid cuckoos arrive, and fantailed cuckoos, and shining-bronze cuckoos, calling, calling all day, and at night after moonrise – See?See?See?See?See?See? See. Here. Their host birds rush to bring out a first brood from eggs laid before the cuckoos arrived, or to complete their nests if they themselves have only just returned from migration – satin flycatchers! Swallows make reconnaissance flights over dams, checking for insect life, and skirl in and out of the sheds and under eaves where they build their mud cups. The equinox is here and wild weather passes over the island as storms emerge from the Southern Ocean and track eastwards, to collide with tropical air that streams down off the Coral Sea; atmospheric rivers pour themselves out over the islands of Aotearoa New Zeal
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