Kenneth Slessor - 5 Bells
Five Bells
Time that is moved by little fidget wheels Is not my time, the flood that does not flow. Between the double and the single bell Of a ship's hour, between a round of bells From the dark warship riding there below, I have lived many lives, and this one life Of Joe, long dead, who lives between five bells.
Deep and dissolving verticals of light Ferry the falls of moonshine down. Five bells Coldly rung out in a machine's voice. Night and water Pour to one rip of darkness, the Harbour floats In the air, the Cross hangs upside-down in water.
Why do I think of you, dead man, why thieve These profitless lodgings from the flukes of thought Anchored in Time? You have gone from earth, Gone even from the meaning of a name; Yet something's there, yet something forms its lips And hits and cries against the ports of space, Beating their sides to make its fury heard.
Are you shouting at me, dead man, squeezing your face In agonies of speech on speechless panes? Cry louder, beat the windows, bawl your name!
But I hear nothing, nothing...only bells, Five bells, the bumpkin calculus of Time. Your echoes die, your voice is dowsed by Life, There's not a mouth can fly the pygmy strait Nothing except the memory of some bones Long shoved away, and sucked away, in mud; And unimportant things you might have done, Or once I thought you did; but you forgot, And all have now forgotten - looks and words And slops of beer; your coat with buttons off, Your gaunt chin and pricked eye, and raging tales Of Irish kings and English perfidy, And dirtier perfidy of publicans Groaning to God from Darlinghurst. Five bells.
Then I saw the road, I heard the thunder Tumble, and felt the talons of the rain The night we came to Moorebank in slab-dark,
So dark you bore no body, had no face, But a sheer voice that rattled out of air (As now you'd cry if I could break the glass), A voice that spoke beside me in the bush, Loud for a breath or bitten off by wind, Of Milton, melons, and the
Time that is moved by little fidget wheels Is not my time, the flood that does not flow. Between the double and the single bell Of a ship's hour, between a round of bells From the dark warship riding there below, I have lived many lives, and this one life Of Joe, long dead, who lives between five bells.
Deep and dissolving verticals of light Ferry the falls of moonshine down. Five bells Coldly rung out in a machine's voice. Night and water Pour to one rip of darkness, the Harbour floats In the air, the Cross hangs upside-down in water.
Why do I think of you, dead man, why thieve These profitless lodgings from the flukes of thought Anchored in Time? You have gone from earth, Gone even from the meaning of a name; Yet something's there, yet something forms its lips And hits and cries against the ports of space, Beating their sides to make its fury heard.
Are you shouting at me, dead man, squeezing your face In agonies of speech on speechless panes? Cry louder, beat the windows, bawl your name!
But I hear nothing, nothing...only bells, Five bells, the bumpkin calculus of Time. Your echoes die, your voice is dowsed by Life, There's not a mouth can fly the pygmy strait Nothing except the memory of some bones Long shoved away, and sucked away, in mud; And unimportant things you might have done, Or once I thought you did; but you forgot, And all have now forgotten - looks and words And slops of beer; your coat with buttons off, Your gaunt chin and pricked eye, and raging tales Of Irish kings and English perfidy, And dirtier perfidy of publicans Groaning to God from Darlinghurst. Five bells.
Then I saw the road, I heard the thunder Tumble, and felt the talons of the rain The night we came to Moorebank in slab-dark,
So dark you bore no body, had no face, But a sheer voice that rattled out of air (As now you'd cry if I could break the glass), A voice that spoke beside me in the bush, Loud for a breath or bitten off by wind, Of Milton, melons, and the