Stephen J. Williams

Category: Books

  • Manifesto

    In a perfect society it would not be necessary to say In a perfect society the politicians should enact a law which provides a regulation for who may be a poet and this perfect law would not deny any person entry to the guild but only say  If you do not tell the truth, you are not a poet.

    A person with a script is standing in the middle of a room, saying The first thing I want to say is that everything I’m going to say here is true.  Of course, you can’t tell everything you know about people unless you’re trying to hurt them and I don’t want to do that.  So I’m going to lie a bit here and there.  But as far as all the things that matter are concerned I’m going to tell the truth. And this may or may not be a reason to revise a perfect law.  I don’t care.  I don’t like poets, anyway. Most of them are just like me.

    Who is a poet, then?  I know one, a schizophrenic, whose head is nearly bursting with all sorts of delusions. He’s in the audience tonight. But you can’t see who it is. It’s dark inside. There’s another in the audience who has had a kind of cancer and has refused to die of it.  And another one I know who — and I must be careful here because, though I have asked if it might be possible to write such a line, it is still a line that is painful to hear — … No, I won’t write it. Privacy has to count for something.

    I say this only to remind you that there is a poetry of the audience.

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  • Exposed

    For James, who died of AIDS on 18 September 1987.

    When death starts its process first we resist, hard to watch
    everything familiar and beautiful about the body shrink.
    We say to ourselves, “I want him back” or “Give me back
    that firm, healthy person!” When we are in the room with him
    all of us want to shout “But where is David?! Where has he gone?!”

    Then, all together, we have the knotted pain in the eyes,
    recognising him among us as a poor remaking of the other man
    we knew. “Michael, is that you I see? Is it really you?”
    Bringing gifts and asking questions we have brought and asked
    many times before, when he was still himself, is a test.
    “Here are some chocolates I thought you might like, and yellow roses.”
    Are these pleasures the new Paul knows? And who are you now?

    In the last year his head is full of creatures and animal hate,
    wide-eyed and terrified to live in the world where everything dies.
    If he is fresh and strong in the morning, he is warm-blooded, huge,
    growling in the garden. Afternoons in the heat he is worn blue
    as a slim lizard, lies about, breathless, bumps into the furniture.

    The old friends leave him, while he makes the real ones new.
    No one dares come near who cannot answer questions:
    “Are you friend or foe?” “Will you fight me, even now,
    in the middle of all this?” and “Will I die? Will I truly die?”

    Before the visiting hours the family takes a few stiff drinks,
    wanders in the numb maze of the hospital, with threads hanging
    behind them. All our tongues are pins and needles for lack of use,
    or telling lies. “Oh, he has cancer, a tragic disease; I did tell him
    not to smoke.” “Thank you for the card. He likes it very much,
    and sends you all his love.” “He is better and we hope for a remission.”

    Afterwards, alone, he practises the scavenging happiness
    of birds, picks up crumbs from his own story, cries and laughs,
    vomits the soft dinner, starves quietly and more surely
    than anyone who waits for justice. Every sleepless night
    some part is stolen and in the morning he is less there.

    He is awake behind closed lids, while we dream
    of planting onions, and hope for death. Even those who don’t
    believe can see he becomes more real; the soul is exposed
    and visible, resting on a cracked edge before it goes.

    Published by ‘A First Hearing’, ABC Radio (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), 31 December 1989, and then in Overland, Number 120, 1990, and various anthologies.
    This poem received the John Shaw Neilson Award for Poetry from the Fellowship of Australian Writers in 1989 (awarded 22 February 1990).
    When you say yes… say yes to safe sex.
    When you say yes… say yes to safe sex (Information flyer of the Victorian AIDS Council) Written by Stephen J. Williams

  • Middle life transcribed for ’cello

    My lessons began with ‘A Bass to Heartsease’,
    The harder work done on grand piano,
    Comforting and accurate as a mother.

    For being even-handed, there was the lesson
    Of double stops; in perfect fifths, delivering sound
    Which once was meant to be the sign of God.

    I’ve learned already, though cannot master it,
    That tension and position are closely linked.
    No failure — and there are many — leaves me worn.

    I squawk for hours, content with struggle, and pay
    For patience and advice while teachers sigh (“If only
    He were ten or twelve — we’d go farther, sooner”).

    I’m late to understanding.  It’s a common fault.
    At 33, I could give up writing for the chance
    To know how one note, rightly sounded — round,

    Toneful, hair clinching string from top to end —
    Shakes the matter in my skull and rests all trouble.
    Still to come are mysteries, endless scales, harmonics.

  • «A crowd of voices» [contents]

    «A crowd of voices» [contents]

    A crowd of voices was first published by Pariah Press (Melbourne, Australia) in 1985. It won the Fellowship of Australian Writers’ Anne Elder Award and the Association for the Study of Australian Literature’s Mary Gilmore Award.

    for Deanna H.

    Contents

    Cover image — Artist : Peter Booth (Australia, b.1940) Title : Date : -1981 Medium Description: oil on canvas Dimensions : Credit Line : Purchased with assistance from the Visual Arts Board Australia Council 1981. Image Credit Line : Accession Number : 203.1981 Used with permission of the artist.
    This book was published by Pariah Press (Melbourne) in 1985. Pariah Press was a coöperative publishing company and its small print-run books did not have commercial distribution.

  • The high price of travelling

    Even though our eyes are bruised
    from reading all the daily news,
    we think of Rome and Paris in the Springtime,
    of telephoning long lost friends,
    of leaving our hearts on tables in expensive restaurants.

    We are like terrorists edging toward some word
    of reason our commander never speaks.
    We begin by opening a book on holidays
    in Uganda, which has a preface telling how
    to sit quietly in living room chairs
    while they become electric with possibilities,
    and read a chapter showing how to move
    our eyes to the corner of their sockets
    so that we can look (without having the appearance
    of looking) at things we do not want to see,
    then flick the pages for some clue
    on how to get there, but all we find
    are reasons not to go.

    It is yet another year of no holidays
    in Uganda, where we could travel
    with lists of missing persons,
    sit and look at complacent animals burning
    in the hot light, and the chance of not seeing ourselves
    would be unlikely.

  • Epic red

    Light up the sky red
    with a red blaze — not blood
    red, not even a patriotic flag
    red that could be politically
    hazy and scared red — but a
    brilliant and artificial red
    like good communists make
    in factories. Then paint.
    Paint the house, embassy,
    the politicians, dictators,
    tyrants, all the ordinary
    people and their comrades;
    paint them all top to
    bottom and the middle parts
    too, especially the penises.
    Bright red penises of Russia
    standing up to be counted
    for mother country. —And
    don’t forget the women:
    the women who take out
    their finest brushes to
    paint the red lines in
    the eyes of their sons.
    They get down on their hands
    and knees to wipe the paint
    off the factory floors;
    they stand at sinks for hours
    scrubbing the paint spots
    out of their husbands’ shirts;
    they wait outside the operating
    theatre when paint messes the
    mechanic’s table; they cry
    and scream the throat of Russia
    red-raw till the whole land
    coughs up blood. Ordinary
    people understand this sort
    of red. It’s the red leaders
    use for wild speculations and
    artists paint radiant futures
    with it. Red is an image
    by itself. Red is hell. Red
    is unnatural, oppressively hot.
    Red like the inside of a mad
    animal’s mouth. Blood-sucking red.
    Red on the screen of the blood
    film. Historical red. The color
    of revolution red. The red hammer
    of education. A red sickle
    to chop off heads. A shade of red
    to blame for everything. Women’s
    red. Menstruation red. Red
    faces and red sex. Red rage.
    Who made the Red Sea red?
    The Russians did. Who invented
    red herrings? The Russians did.
    Who built the pyramids?
    The Russians did. Who shot down
    the Korean plane? The Russians
    did. Who made America what
    it is today? The Russians did.