extract from “reflections on the last four” by wayne gleeson (1918)

“by the time march split the year open, allowing wildflowers to equip the soil with life presented by no one and for nothing, i had already forgotten the urge. winter was so long. i understood as much as i had done alone but what had happened between me and everyone else was a mystery. i had loved? perhaps. and hated? almost certainly. yet these words are filled with so much confusion now.

some have suggested that we all become mild amnesiacs before we (not so suddenly) break off from life. i perhaps saw that in my own father in the months before his death. but i think that this could be something else. maybe before we can think about living in the future, we have to become ignorant of the past. i have never thought like this before. i have always believed that i have to befriend my ghosts so that they will let me endure. they have always been spectres as much as relics.

[pause]

yet…..now they possess names that i cannot pronounce.”

extract from “rest assured” by abdullah ibrahim (1972)

“i spent too long in the countryside to ever notice the sky. when i moved to the city, that changed. boxed in between rows of skyscrapers, the sky suddenly became valuable to me. it seemed so anachronistic but more appropriate to the future than the past. it was, after all, something that i had never imagined before; how could it belong to the past? before too long i began to spend an hour each day walking along the city’s avenues, looking at that gap between concrete, metal and glass. there was something gloriously pathetic about seeing the future kettled in like that.”