The Glass Jar

To Vivian Smith

A child one summer's evening soaked

a glass jar in the reeling sun

hoping to keep, when day was done

and all the sun's disciples cloaked

in dream and darkness from his passion fled,

this host, this pulse of light beside his bed.

Wrapped in a scarf his monstrance stood

ready to bless, to exorcize

monsters that whispering would rise

nightly from the intricate wood

that ringed his bed, to light with total power

the holy commonplace of field and flower.

He slept. His sidelong violence summoned

fiends whose mosaic vision saw

his heart entire. Pincer and claw,

trident and vampire fang, envenomed

with his most secret hate, reached and came near

to pierce him in the thicket of his fear.

He woke, recalled his jar of light,

and trembling reached one hand to grope

the mantling scarf away. Then hope

fell headlong from its eagle height.

Through the dark house he ran, sobbing his loss,

to the last clearing that he dared not cross:

the bedroom where his comforter

lay in his rival's fast embrace

and faithless would not turn her face

from the gross violence done to her.

Love's proud executants played from a score

no child could read or realize. Once more

to bed, and to worse dreams he went.

A ring of skeletons compelled

his steps with theirs. His father held

fiddle and bow, and scraped assent

to the malignant ballet. The child dreamed

this dance perpetual, and waking screamed

fresh morning to his window-sill.

As ravening birds began their song

the resurrected sun, whose long

triumph through flower-brushed fields would fill

night's gulfs and hungers, came to wink and laugh

in a glass jar beside a crumpled scarf.

So the loved other is held

for mortal comfort, and taken,

and the spirit's light dispelled

as it falls from its dream to the deep

to harrow heart's prison so heart may waken

to peace in the paradise of sleep.

This version taken from 'The Penguin Book of Australian Verse' Edited with an introduction by Harry Heseltine.Thanks to Maybe Oneday, one of our readers.