Eucalyptus platypus platypus

Have been measuring trees for 4 weeks, and just got back from Ravensthorpe. One of the favourite sites we measured was a large stand of mort, on a farm just below the Lake Magenta Mallee Fowl Reserve.

Last night lasted an hundred years

emptiness found a thread of hopeless desire pull me
from one room to another
following human sounds
while I was not.

But only a hopeless knot of self pity.

Enough! I
will not go down that too-well
trodden path again,
because of my laziness
and self hunger.

I will not tell you how I feel
nor feel like this.
nor return,
trying to drag you along in my wake of tears.

I do not even ask that you forgive me,
I ask that none forgive me.
I practice this act of newness to forget,
and to be new.
This guilt shame is wearing a shirt too thin,
I will simply to be anew
and so the practice of this I will
is to use to simply be

another

self-death for the death of self pity,
this hopeless one whom i disown,
disavow,
and what is it? Excommunicate.

For a church of the new world
I will build from canvas on the shifting sands
that it be strong,
knowledge-renewable
infinitely flexible
and allow the passage of the winds of change
eternal
happy
joyous.

Do not forgive.

I will it.
then I am so
other.

If I could tell you...

If I could tell you
the laws of my longing
you would be here
on behalf of your greed
the witness of a hungry man
who does not care
if you are naked or shy

Because now that I
can't use it or feel it
I know for a fact
that I am beautiful
and more than anything
you want a beautiful slave
to make you cry

And long after that
whenever I touched you
whenever you undressed
you would need to know
what I was thinking
and you could be as treacherous
and you know you are
you would be a spy

And then something would happen
that would crush us
and free us
and destroy completely
whatever had been
and we would have begun
to signal one another
each time before we lie

p46 Leonard Cohen, 1972, The Energy of Slaves. Jonathon Cape Ltd. London.