At the end of History

Author(s): Kate Middleton

Source: Antipodes, Vol. 19, No. 2, Special Issue: The Sacred in Australian Literature
(December 2005), p. 197
Published by: Wayne State University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41957467
Accessed: 27-06-2016 14:06 UTC

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Antipodes

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Kate M iddleton

At the end of History

from the Vollard Notebooks
Ben Cornford

The spoken dirge, Veronika on the Gold Coast

the urgent attempt to send off

You must have wondered

Imogen, that refrain
at your sentence; to be sent
that invitation to kings -
from Köln to the Gold Coast

come to dust. to learn the clarinet. A boy

I do not think Lot's wife knew soon asked what "that thing" was,
but you knew boys everywhere
were dumb, though here
it was impossible
brain death was endemic.
to look back only a moment:

You did love the beach

the salt
until it was a prison
licked over her for years
and you fancied the boys
as the world ended until they spoke of engines;
you were sweet and serious and even
and as dawn came again and again.
loved the heat and sun
until you knew it never stopped
Patterson's curse,
as no one ever seemed to take an interest.
here, and clay - the clay from which

Ovid records It was not arrogance that made you

the human race (and human monsters, laugh in a shopping mall of glass
where the minister for culture
had erected a plastic David,
I suppose)
was molded. Like the fisherman but rather, sadness and fear
that you might soon dissipate
to become as hollow as their cars,
asking too much
or vapid as the burning sand.
from the fish thrown back - from Pope

back to the shack You were shown the "big" things;

a pineapple, large as a house,
and humble dory. So from that vast
a banana, long as a boat
and perspired
stained glass museum
in their shadows, blinded and wet
I return here, trace the sweat
belying your years to think
how small was all this empty size,
mingled with
and how lost is rootless modernity.
the dirt, where only the future exists,

only
darkness and the stars.

Ben CORNFORD completed a PhD in early medieval

KATE Middleton is a writer and composer. Her work
has previously appeared in Heat, M eanjin, New
England Review , and Antipodes. In 2002 she was select-
ed as the "Emerging Writer" for the Mildura Writers'
Festival. She lives in Melbourne.
Italian history in 2003 in the UK and is currently
enrolled in a Masters in Professional Writing at the
University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). He has
work forthcoming in M eanjin. This is his first appear-
ance in Antipodes and his first poetry publication.

Antipodes ❖ 197

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