quantum leaps (group show) 1982

Womens Art Movement
Adelaide University

(text/statement for quantum leaps group show 1982. no images available)

strophe and anti-strophe

In the darkness we will plant seeds for survival.
In the secret mulch of night we will grow
sumptuous fruit against war.
Among the fragments of moonlight
we will love and weed and swoon to our crops
before the awful grey that augurs a violent dawn.
And when the daylight comes, to illuminate despair
and focus on that battlefield, tumultuous and scabbed,
and fouled with shrapnel and ash and unnatural rags of flesh,
torn from the beauty of bone, our flowers will rise,
and the vine so young and sweet and green
will bloom from our blood to trap the plunderer,
the dictator and sterilise his greed, and never again
will our gardens be raped by the cold
and angular weapons of war.

Who will protect the seeds.
Who will guard their tenderness.
Who will remember the poems in the midst of mistakes.
Who will sing songs of quantum leaps
among the bruised and deranged.
Who will acknowledge dawn as holy
when the day that follows is grim.
Day follows day inevitably and poignantly.
Our time is linear and scarred almost beyond hope
with repetitions, mistakes and repetitions.
Who will dare to ask for love and make a feast
and call for succulent fruit though it be damaged and cursed.
Who will go on dreaming, layer upon layer in the darkness,
as if it mattered or changed our lives.