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    The Lustre Jug
    The Lustre Jug
    The Lustre Jug
    Ebook91 pages35 minutes

    The Lustre Jug

    By Bernadette Hall

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    About this ebook

    Evocative and beautiful, this anthology tracks between the dualities of the rain-washed skies of Donoughmore County, Cork, and the Queensland rainforest and its national and personal histories. Inspired by the poet's experiences near Blarney in Ireland as well as her New Zealand homeland and family, the lighthearted yet daring verses reflect a questing, generous, civilized mind. The poetry ultimately succeeds by being tough-minded and wary.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherVictoria University Press
    Release dateApr 1, 2010
    ISBN9780864736727
    The Lustre Jug

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      Book preview

      The Lustre Jug - Bernadette Hall

      ALSO BY BERNADETTE HALL

      Poetry

      Heartwood

      of Elephants etc 

      The Persistent Levitator 

      Still Talking

      Settler Dreaming 

      The Merino Princess: Selected Poems 

      The Way of the Cross (sculptures by Llew Summers) 

      The Ponies

      Edited

      Big Sky: Canterbury Poems (co-editor James Norcliffe)

      The Chook Book

      access to lilac:14 poems by Joanna Margaret Paul

      Like Love Poems: Selected Poems by Joanna Margaret Paul

      Plays

      The Clothesline

      The Girl Who Sings Waterfalls 

      Glad and the Angels

      Questing (a musical)

      The Lustre Jug

      Bernadette Hall

      for Robyn of Rathcoola

      Contents

      I

      Rathcoola Rain

      At Domhnach Mór

      The Holy Ground

      The Hound of Coolmona

      The Scar

      Picking Wild Blackberries for Jam

      St Declan’s Stone

      Beside the River Shournagh

      The Stone Wall

      an paístín fionn

      The Naad Bog

      The Glass Harmonica

      Torso of a Bogman

      Tobairín na Súl

      St Brigid’s Cross

      The Mapmaker

      The Famine Notebook

      The Famine Cemetery

      In Which She Questions Poetry

      The Pikemen

      Three Sisters Dancing

      The Fox

      The War is Over

      Living in the Rebel South

      Cromwell

      Mrs O’Malley in Paris

      And We All Chortle Like Crows

      Guilt

      Luxury

      II

      Angelfish

      Jacaranda

      Pelican at Maroochydore

      Leda at the Billabong

      Hoki Toki

      In Vitro

      Little Angel, Little Fish

      A Very Short Story about Flying

      Lullaby

      Scraps

      Your Pope’s Man

      Tears and Wounds

      Really & Truly

      A Writer’s Life, or, A Sackful of Spuds

      The Americans: a film noir

      The Hazelnut Tree

      Girl on a Divan

      The Strenuous Life

      The Lustre Jug

      In the Court of the Paua Queen

      The Black Collie

      Lost

      Perfume

      Notes

      Acknowledgements

      Copyright

      I

      They rowed to an island which,

      though not large, was fortified

      by a stronghold; on the stronghold

      (for all to know) was a firm brass fence.

      Around the fence was a lovely pool

      raised high above the sea’s waves

      (no tale can equal this in splendour);

      before it was a glass bridge.

      Áed Finn, c.920, Ireland

      Rathcoola Rain

      The rain is like mice scrabbling in the ceiling.

      It’s like the crackling of plastic,

      the first licking of flames in a handful of wood shavings,

      the complicit turning of pages in hundreds of Mass books. 

      It is slight and light and insistent.

      We walk out into it, we lift our arms up,

      we hug the rain. We are newcomers from the farthest south,

      we have stories of drought from the Shaky Isles,

      from the Continent of Fire

      where desiccated trees in their extremity sweat a kind of blood. 

      The streaming sycamore, the hawthorn boughs stir.

      Mint glistens in the garden. Moss on the old stone walls

      and on the apple trees is as thick as the fleece

      of a renegade sheep that hasn’t been shorn for years.

      We are thankful for the rain

      that slides into the wet garden on strings of sunlight.

      At Domhnach Mór

      Domhnach Mór, it says on the blackstone slab

      beside the road, and New Tipperary,

      and above the words a

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