Reflecting on the last doubledup year, 1919,
Prone to patterns and a facile fascination with numbers,
Especially doubles, I wonder if these squared years may
Symbolically bellweather their centuries?
Needs be a better student of history to be certain
But it’s an interesting thought
Bear with me.

1919
The year of a pandemic,
A first of peace after a war to end all wars
Albeit an unsteady peace based on a flawed treaty
That merely sowed the seeds of
An even greater war two decades on.
The start of a boom that went horribly bust
And threw the world into economic chaos
From which a new economics emerged.
The start of a new world order
The end of the old colonialism
The start of communist experiment
The division of the world into a binary opposition
That took the rest of the century to coldly resolve.
The shift from Europe to America as
The cynosure of attention
The centre of world culture and power

Will 2020
With its bushfires, coronacrisis and race riots
Prove as prescient?

 

© Ian Lilburne 2020

 

Lest we forget
But tell me, what exactly are we meant to remember?
The tragic loss of a generation on the fields of war?
The missed potential of their collective ingenuity?
The mental and physical mutilation of those lucky enough to ‘survive’?
Their quiet hours of anguish and PTSD
Undiagnosed and untreated
Suffered with a stoic ‘Chin up, soldier on’?
All the kids who grew up never knowing their dads and uncles?
All the cousins that never were?

Or are there other things on this agenda of memory?

The stupidity of the military hierarchy
For waging an industrial war with pre-industrial strategies?
Ordering troops to charge against machine guns
As though dodging the odd ill-aimed shot?
Sitting back and reissuing the same orders
Even when it was bleedingly obvious they weren’t working?

Or the abomination of the armistice?
A peace deal that heralded a revolution
The Great Depression
And an even bloodier conflagration twenty years later?
Smart way to end the war to end all wars.

Or perhaps we’re meant to remember the reason it started
The crazy confluence of treaties that meant
The farcical assassination of a minor monarch in a stupid helmet
Fractured irrevocably the ‘civilized’ world?

And defending what?
A bunch of tired old colonial empires
Those bastions of oppression that benefitted only
The over-privileged?

Or perhaps we’re meant to remember
The commemorations themselves?
Especially this centenary
The expense of it and all those pompous politicians
With their solemn speeches about the birth of a nation
Selfless sacrifice
Human tragedy
La-la la-la
But who were really just using it as a yet another way to feed
The twenty-four-hour news cycle
A photo opportunity to ram their faces down our eyes again
In the hope that we might think better of them
Vote them back in?

There’s a lot to remember
But apart from the poor soldiers and their families
Little of it noble

 

© Ian Lilburne 2018

Waking from a deep sleep
The first again in my own bed
I knew I was home
But no longer where home was
Hong Kong?
London?
Paris?
Berlin?
Not here
Australia
Where the sun moves backwards
Across a ridiculously blue sky
And the shadows fall strangely

 

© Ian Lilburne 2010

What worse fate
For someone with serious
Aspirations
Than to be labelled
An amateur?
The perennial also ran
Someone who hasn’t
Paid their dues
Who tries and tries
But never breaks through
Who always makes
The same mistakes
Whatever they do
Then moves on
Before learning
Forever yearning
To be taken seriously
Not dismissed
As an amateur

 

© Ian Lilburne 2010

The longer I stay in Europe
The more I question Australia
The obsession with sport
The trivial media
The political ineptitude
The treatment of Aboriginal people
The genocide of their culture
The selfish attitude toward refugees
The lack of critical culture
Commercial TV
The lack of credible political debate
The dearth of credible politicians
The void of leadership
The sixty-forty rule
The bland conformity
The tall poppy syndrome
The silent ridicule of anyone
Who tries to be different
Pub rock
The obsession with sport
The arrogance of the Liberal Party
The formulaic intransigence of the ALP
The myopia of the Nationals
The naïvety of the Greens
Family First and One Nation
The prevalence of sound bites
The lack of a viable manufacturing industry
The short term thinking
The primacy of money
The dig-it-up and rip-it-down
The way mediocre artists rise to the top
On the strength of their networking
Neighbours and The New Inventors
The dismissal of intellectuals
The myopia of she’ll be right
The lack of genuine critical debate
The narrow parochialism of our
Claims to be ‘World Class’
The outer suburbs
The men who drink too much beer
The fact that Rupert Murdoch was born there
The hatred of introspection
The xenophobia
The racism
The morbidly obese enviro-vandal vehicles…

Is it merely the lens of travel
That brings these things into focus?
If I lived in Europe
Would I not draft a list
Of equally passionate charges
Even the same ones
Against my adopted country?

It’s easy when travelling
To retreat to the high moral ground
Is that why exiles seem happier?
Why their individuality
Is so readily accepted?
‘It’s different where they come from
Such differences must be respected’

But the longer an exile
Remains in exile
A two-fold alienation
Envelopes them
Individual yes
Yet living a double lie
Neither here nor there
Neither us nor them

And so I return
And not just for these reasons
But for the things I love
Which the lens of travel
Also brings into focus

My wide circle of close friends
The almost perfect weather
The easy way of life
The way you can step off the treadmill
Then back on without losing a beat
The gunmetal waters of Gage Roads
When the wind’s up and the sailing brisk
The Greenough Flats
Albany in summer
The golden morning light on
The gum trees fronting Kings Park
The Australian sky
The UWA campus
The melted sunlight on a
Cloud-scattered sunset
The perfect beaches
The lazy slap of summer
Before the torpor sets in
Autumn and spring
The gentle winter
Perth when it rains
The generosity of the national spirit
The larrikin humour
The openness
The egalitarianism
The fairness of the legal system
The commitment to justice
The fair go
The ABC and SBS
The Monthly and Quarterly Essay
Rockwiz
Sydney Harbour and Matilda Bay
Lygon Street
Driving into Perth from Greenmount
The coast road to Fremantle on a hazy
Afternoon when the colours blur pastel
Cottesloe, Brighton and Bondi
Fred Williams’ landscapes
Fred Smith’s songs
Liz Frencham’s lisp
Anything by Brett Whitely
Sid Nolan and John Brack
The Heidelberg School
Max Dupain’s photography
The Dancing Man
Patrick White
Ross Edwards’ First Symphony
And Clarinet Concerto
Sculthorpe’s Kakadu
Kakadu
Our international film-makers when
They make Australian films
The Ned Kelly myth
Kerry O’Brien and Lee Lin Chin
Paul Kelly and Paul Keating
Judy Davis and Cate Blanchett
The early seasons of
Rake and Jack Irish
The actors with Prime Minister’s names
(Robert Menzies, John Howard)
Germaine Greer
Robert Hughes before the crash
Nick Cave and the Finns…

Maybe I do fit in?

 

© Ian Lilburne 2010