Jill Jones
Jill Jones won the 2003 Kenneth
Slessor Poetry Prize for Screens, Jets, Heaven: New
and Selected Poems and the 1993 Mary Gilmore Award
for her first book of poetry, The Mask and the Jagged
Star. Her latest full-length book, Broken/Open, was
short-listed for The Age Book of the Year 2005 and
the 2006 Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize. In 2007 she
took part in the 23rd Festival International de la
Poesie in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, Canada.
‘Das Lied von der Erde’
The song-dreamed movement
breathes
its difficulty
blooms its form
Trying to get a handle
on it
as if my inclinations
were liquid
A blue lit surface covers
the memory
of its music with abundant
shadow
Die Erde atmet
voll von Ruh und Schlaf
… Die Welt
schläft ein!
It’s the kind of song
about finding yourself
in the lag at the end
of lines
Perhaps the words are
demands
you hear under the rain’s
acid
Freedom retorts above
the old message
dumb eruptions
voluminous forms of restlessness
Newspapers cloud in keys
shutdowns
one more orange morning
surrounds the world
You can track it
the unpredictable
here’s light
words in raw turning
Note:
The German can be translated as: ‘The earth breathes, full
of peace and sleep/
… The world falls asleep!’
As It Comes To You, Finally
I see smoke loops by trees
and hear voices of those
arrested and pursued.
There’s an injury
which certainly must break us.
This is as sure as everything.
That flashing isn’t gold
or stairs within the sky.
The whole air is burning
with extremity.
We would wish to be safe,
repair the wall or the information
but these times are writing
into the substance.
So a day will be taken to its lengths
when, in misgiving,
the last forests give form
to these chains, our echoes.
The road we roll on
is greater than our parts.
In order to act, begin
this walk into the whole, and sing
with a clear woman who gives
return for the felt hard air,
for the shadow.
To connect, let the wind
clear your lies and your whispers.
(All memory knows the word,
the end for which is come.)
Dear injury, can you hear
how the storms are blowing?
Listen hard as it comes to you finally.
If we’re all at a cliff and a balance
…
to break ourselves of everything.
– after ‘Inside the Words of “Stairway to Heaven”’
(textile and thread), by Lucille Martin, and a series of
photographs by Ted Harvey of the 1972 Sydney Led Zeppelin
concert.
A White Boat
A moment sings your hard life
against the pier
A voice dreams your thought
your spirit with all its riot
Music moves through night
a city lodges in you
A figure walks alone
disturbing order
You say ‘I’ve just one other sea
one land more than this’
but your corpse enters
reminiscent of all aphrodisiacs.
Not every road is a possible road
since you ruined time
Each judgment has its secrecy
the shutdowns of therefore
Each possible way
will destroy and endure, only you
Even in that moment
the white boat is here, for you
© 2008
Salt Publishing Limited 
