Happiness is a Study chaotic with Poetry

Today is pure indulgence, sweetened with lavish sups of coffee and macadamia biscuits. Afternoon winter is intent of murder, brute with snarl, chilling the school's over kids as they trundle with weighted packs from their classes along the busy road outside my home. For a couple of hours at least, I had time to be undisturbed with one of my favourite Poets and Poetry. This muse, generally, seems not much read by the young (I doubt if any of the kids heading home would have met much Poetry) nor Poetry be met by anyone a generation removed. Though a wary foray onto the Internet could give perhaps a not to be believed 'lie' to this assertion? I recall, fondly, the Teachers of my formation years, who in pleasure brought Poetry to verve for me. They were few then; they'd be near extinct now. So, today is an extravagance, borne of the happy chaos of my Study. For all I care, winter can blow itself into the southern ocean and mush about over Antarctica.

Throughout his long life of ninety-three years, Alec Derwent Hope (usually domiciled as A. D. Hope) could be regarded as one of the finest traditional form Poets of the 20th Century when about him swirled much Poetry revision and experimentation. Though he was very robust in his life's outlook and to me not the least outdated, some dismissed his rhyming stanzas as curious, even docile. Further, Hope (in the compass of my very limited spectrum) seemed little encountered and more so these days, except perhaps in literary cloisters. I suppose his taut and scholarly syntax (there was none of the glib, lazy and poorly punctuated scrawl daubing his verses), seem almost alien to modern readers. Yet, much can be learned by Hope's ability to be grave with his words and not to infect his lines with any measure of personal introspect. Nor is Hope laden with incomprehension as some (fortunately, not all) contemporary Poetry is often imprisoned.

As hail pelted the window pane, I was engrossed in one of Hope's poems, (seen in part in the photograph), his brief landscape history titled 'Australia' - a gentle rebuke of sorts. But it is in his Poem, 'The Mayan Books', of just twelve exquisite, yet scorching lines, where he goes straight for a jugular. He writes a savage denunciation of bigotry and hypocrisy, addled with the mostly disastrous consequences for indigenous culture in the name of an imposed prospect. These brusque lines for me claim why Hope is one of the finest in the Australian canon.

THE MAYAN BOOKS

Diego de Landa, archbishop of Yucatan
The curse of God upon his pious soul -
Placed all their Devil?s picture books under ban
And, piling them in one sin-heap, burned the whole;

But took the trouble to keep the calendar
By which the Devil had taught them to count time.
The impious creatures had tallied back as far
As ninety million years before Eve?s crime.

That was enough: they burned the Mayan books,
Saved souls and kept their own in proper trim.
Diego de Landa in heaven always looks
Towards God: God never looks at him.

So, it may be a muted day outside, but for me this was an opportunity to indulge and reacquaint with my love of Poetry as proposed by one of its finest Australian writers.

I hope you will forgive this luxury? Normal service shall be resumed with my next entry.