Category: Arts

• Breathing Through Today and Hoping For Tomorrow: A Review of BE by BTS

  January 17, 2021 7:36 pm Comments Off on Breathing Through Today and Hoping For Tomorrow: A Review of BE by BTS

  NOTE: All lyrics translations taken from bangtansubs.com
  “The world came to a stop one day” sings the melodious, wistful voice of Jungkook at the beginning of the first song and title track of ‘BE’. This first line immediately tells you what the song is about and sets the tone for the album. ‘BE’, BTS’ 9th studio album, is written for a world caught in a pandemic, where “time passes on its own, without a word of apology”. For this world, their message is ‘Life Goes On’. The message might sound too simple, but BTS have never been ones for easy comfort. A few years ago, BTS’ message was ‘Love Yourself’. They took a phrase often uttered casually but dove deep into it, spending two years, three albums and a series of interconnected videos demonstrating the complex, journey through pain, heartbreak, self-questioning and self-discovery required to reach a point of true self-love. They didn’t just throw the message out there, they approached it with care, depth and real thoughtfulness. That is what BTS always do and what they have done with this new album as well.
  ‘BE’ is not as intense and grand as some of their previous works, but it has the same underlying sensitivity and empathy. The title track ‘Life Goes On’ is no empty reassurance. It acknowledges that things are hard, but asks you to close your eyes for a moment and think of a future where things might be okay. A warm, sentimental alternative hip hop song, it is intimate and comforting. Usually ones for more energetic or dramatic title tracks, BTS take a softer approach this time. The second song on the album, ‘Fly To My Room’, also reflects that approach. A laidback, chill track with a nice, lazy sway to it, it tackles the suffocation of being stuck in your room with an uplifting playfulness. The idea behind it isn’t revolutionary, but it is refreshing: We can’t fly anywhere else, so why not just fly to our rooms? While the first two tracks both have a balance of hope and sadness, the third track ‘Blue and Grey’ delves much more into sadness. The sadness of this song isn’t a heavy, emotional one. Like the colours blue and grey, it is a more muted melancholy. With soulful vocals, thoughtful rapping and lyrics like “I just wanna be happier, Is even this too much to ask for?”, it is both heartbreaking and comforting at the same time. It is the quiet solace of knowing that someone else out there has nights as lonely and cold as yours.
  One thing I have always loved about BTS albums is the structure. There is always a logic, an intention behind the way the tracks are ordered. In ‘BE’, track 4 ‘Skit’ splits the album into two parts, wherein part 1 is the more moody half and part 2 is the ‘enough crying let’s dance’ half of the album. This split is, in some ways, marked by the theme of the skit itself. Skits are a common feature in many of BTS’ older albums, and they consist of recorded conversations between the members. There is no music, only talking, a tradition that comes from old-school hip hop culture, where rappers often had skits in their mixtapes. The skit in this album recorded their reactions to getting their first number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, a historic moment for them, their fans and the larger music industry. The song that achieved this, ‘Dynamite’, wasn’t originally part of their plans. If things were normal, they would have been on a grand world tour at that time. Motivated to put out something happy and energetic in depressing times, they achieved some of their greatest success with this unexpected release. It was a bright spark in otherwise very dark times, and it is this kind of light that the second half of the album focuses on. The music becomes a little more upbeat, reminding us that there are reasons to push through.
  For BTS, that reason is their fans. Forced to cancel performances and concerts, they have constantly stated that the hardest thing for them has been not being able to see their fans. This is reflected in the music video for ‘Life Goes On’, which shows the band singing in an empty stadium, the lyrics “I remember” playing over the emotional scene. In many ways, this album is a letter to their loved ones, conveying their longing, while also promising that the distance hasn’t changed anything. In track 5 of the album, BTS reassure their fans, through funky disco pop, that they share a ‘Telepathy’ between them, that “Even though right now we’re far away, Our hearts are still the same”. The Korean title of the song, 잠시, which can be translated to ‘for a moment’, is meaningful too. It is impossible not to groove to the song, and it urges you to forget about your worries, if only for a moment. Track 7, ‘Stay’, is heartfelt with a similar message – it doesn’t matter how long or how great the separation, the boys “know you always stay”. The sincere lyrics are juxtaposed with high-energy electronic music, a contrast that can also be seen in the combination of soaring vocals with earnest, gravely rap. I can imagine this song being performed at a concert, with the audience dancing and jumping but also shouting out every lyric straight from the heart.
  Nestled between these odes to the part of their job they love, is a song about the part of their job they don’t. ‘Dis-ease’ addresses the disease of work – a disease that these 7 boys, all bearers of heavy crowns, know all too well. While the world is plagued by the virus, BTS are plagued additionally by their inability to stop working, their extreme discomfort with the idea of rest. Forced by circumstances to take a break, they lament, “My heart needs a vacation too”. The topic of the song isn’t a fun one, but it is tackled with the same creativity and contrast displayed in other parts of the album. Member J-Hope played a major role in its production, and the track has J-Hope written all over it. A natural dancer, he transfers a bounce, a rhythm to the song. With old school hip hop, sick flow from the rappers and gorgeous harmonies from the vocalists, the song feels like a colourful, but controlled, explosion. The real ‘Dynamite’, of course, is the last track. Originally released as a single, I was worried that the song might feel out of place in the album. But, listening to it from start to finish, it makes sense to end with fireworks and joy.
  ‘BE’ is one of those things you don’t realise you need until it’s given to you, like a tight hug from a friend who senses your anxiety before you do yourself. I felt the music, the words, go right inside me and loosen some of the knots in my chest, making it a little easier to breathe. BTS don’t have lofty goals with this album, they don’t pretend to solve the world’s problems with some new songs. But, by providing a hand to hold and a warm presence to share hope with, they made 2020 a bit more bearable.
   

  Aditi Dubey

• C.A. Brandenburg

  May 28, 2020 11:44 am Comments Off on C.A. Brandenburg

  When he came to Sydney on exchange from the U. of I. at Urbana–Champaign, C.A. Brandenburg started renting an apartment on Gloucester Street. It was, at the time, near the height of fashion. None of us knew where he got the money for it. There he was wedged between St Patrick’s Church and a long row of what used to be warehouses. Down the street from him was the dormitory of the New York University foreign exchange, where all the American undergrad girls stayed. He was with them often, and soon they all loved him. He was himself of Midwestern extraction — a Peoria sand-hiller who liked to tell people he was from Chicago. I visited him under the pretext of heading uptown for mass at St Patrick’s, but really I came solely for him. When knocking on his door I’d often find him with a girl, and he would tell her to go or bid her stick around, and, “Hear this, my little lovely, you gone little girl, Italo’s here, he’s just taken Holy Mass, look at the Dharmakaya light on him, and listen, listen to Italo,” affecting his Chi-town accent, and he’d have me read from my notebook whatever I was working on writing that week. He would hear his name in my voice and his ears would prick up and his face brighten with unserious vanity.
  I called our group the Cadets because we frequented the little Glebe bar-café called The Cadet. It was by following me around that C.A. become ingratiated with us, and soon he adopted us as his foremost exhibit. We became accessories to his all-encompassing self. I was the writer, Delco was the artist, et cetera. We each got used to being introduced to people by him. He curated us. He had taught himself the language of counterculture, and with us he finally had a chance to practise it. He also corralled together an inexhaustible series of square, respectable people, whom he’d introduce to our circle, and after a few times we wouldn’t see them again either because they’d grown weary of our navel-gazing — oh don’t worry about them, they’re squares! — or because C.A. had disposed of them for another group – just wait till you see who I’m bringing next week!
  “Oh they’re all here, come on over and meet the Cadets — yes that’s what they call themselves, isn’t that beat? This is the real crowd here, the people with their fingers on the pulse.” He said this one night in Kaskade Bar with another New Yorker on his arm, along with her entourage and all their boyfriends, who uniformly dressed and drank like business majors.
  “There is Italo Salmoragho, who is set to become a great writer. And next to him is my friend Painter Delco, who paints” (that part delivered deadpan, without a hint of irony) “and here’s Dave Peukert, Scott Bez- jak, Germ Bryggen, Mr Princeton, Mr Novik — he’s miserable — Bruno Serero, Phellype, and Liedesow, who’s trying to break into theatre…”
  Now, the ‘C’ in C.A. Brandenburg stood for Courtney, a family name, and a rare point about which he felt a sense of shame — rare, because in all other things he was as shameless as a naked animal. So, he introduced himself as ‘C.A.’, or ‘Brandenburg’, or sometimes, mysteriously, as ‘Cal’. His father had been a professional soldier — the Gulf, Somalia, Yugoslavia — who was obsessed by old German nobility, particularly the Hohenzollerns, to whom he believed he was distantly related. C.A.’s mother hailed from Trieste. According to C.A., his father came along sometime after Bosnia and swept her off her feet on one of his grand tours. I had to know him a long time before he would tell me anything like that, and who could say whether or not it was true.
  It wasn’t long after I heard that story that C.A. disappeared from all our lives. He took off two months before his exchange was set to run out. No goodbyes. He might have gone back to Illinois, but there were a hundred other places he said he dreamed of going to. He might have gone to New York after one of his girlfriends, or Paris on one of his Poundian sprees. None of us knew. And for a good long while after that, when- ever we sat for drinks at The Cadet, or Kaskade, or at Picklock’s over on Crown Street, in the back of our minds, we’d be waiting patiently for him to stride in and show us off to his people.

  Edward Anderson

• The Introvert’s Soliloquy

  11:21 am Comments Off on The Introvert’s Soliloquy

  As of this very moment, I have never felt more alive, Because each day I wake up with only me, myself and I. Such a cruel irony, all those peasants, their social lives cut short,
  Now they can’t hang out with friends, they’ve cancelled all team sports.
  But I believe, all of my life, I’ve prepared for this day to come,
  Utopic isolation: I knew there’d be a time when I’d have to see no one.
  It’s such a rush, to be alone, and with my mighty sword, Battle terrible monsters and RSI from spamming my glowing keyboard.
   
  Any sunlight burns my skin, inside the air is damp and close.
  I soldier on, because here in my bed is where I find comfort most.
  Netflix is my special place, I binged Tiger King in one day. My dances have made me Tik Tok famous, should I audition for Broadway?
  I love how all my extrovert friends can’t tell if I’m even jokin’
  When I say that there’s nothing more satisfying than saying nothing, because your mic on Zoom is ‘broken’. Social distancing saved my life, and to it I am ever grateful,
  Cause there’s nothing worse than going out to restaurants: UberEats, give me a plateful!
   
  All those people going to Bondi, they must be sick in the head.
  It’s like they have no self-control, do they want this virus to spread?
  I just can’t believe someone would want to voluntarily go outside!
  The internet is so freaking cool and if you need, into those DMs you can slide!
   
  Sometimes I wonder if I’ll find someone who too loves the silent abyss,
  Who likes to stay in bed, reads and bakes, who thinks a life at home is bliss.
  So, if you’re reading now (you know who you are), and you think it’d be a treat,
  Please isolate with me, it’s not that hard, and you wouldn’t even have to speak.
  Cause I am just an introvert, but this I know is true,
  That if I were to be lonely, I’d only want to be lonely with you.

  Samantha Wong

• Five Days Alone

  11:18 am Comments Off on Five Days Alone

  CONTENT WARNING: Allusions to Alcoholism and Climate Change; Depression; Brief Mention of Death
  Day 1
  I am alone, and I’m okay with it.
  My alarm goes off at 7am. I sit up from my bed. Then I remember that I don’t have anywhere to go today, so I fall back down.
  I open my blinds and look out the window. It’s a nice, sunny day outside. Maybe I’ll go for a run later.
  I get up, have a shower, have breakfast and start work at my desk. I work until 5pm with a break for lunch and a run in-between, like I’d normally do if I went into the office.
  I channel-surf, have a cup of tea, brush my teeth again and go to bed at 10pm.
  Day 2
  I am alone, and I think I’m going to get used to it.
  My alarm goes off at 7am. I turn it off and go straight back to sleep. I wake up at 8am. I got a lot of work done yesterday, so I can afford to sleep in for a bit.
  I get up, have a shower, have breakfast and start work. I get everything done quickly. To kill time, I go on my phone for a bit. Every post is about crisis, sickness, mass panic. My heart flutters. I’m in the midst of it all. We all are.
  I try to go for a run, but it ends up just be- ing a walk. Today, my muscles seem heavier, my legs seem weaker, my breathing seems faster. Oh well. We all have bad days.
  I channel-surf and have a glass of wine. I brush my teeth and go to bed at 10pm, but I can’t sleep. My mind creates stories, images, conversations with my family I might never have. By the time I fall asleep, it’s got to be at least midnight.
  Day 3
  I am alone, and it doesn’t feel right. I’ve been in isolation for days now, and while I thought I was used to it, I’m getting cabin fever.
  I jump out of bed and walk outside in my pyjamas. I look up at the sky – the clouds are grey, looming, like the end of the world is coming.
  I don’t feel like breakfast.
  I stay lying on my bed, thinking about all the possible things that could happen in the near future. Everyone could die. The human race might perish with the Earth crumbling underneath us, the Sun exploding above us. This kind of thinking isn’t helpful, but I feel helpless.
  Mum calls me, but my brain is moving so quickly, my mouth can’t keep up. We make small talk for five minutes, then I make an excuse and hang up.
  I channel-surf again, not paying attention to anything on the screen. All of the images blur together, people’s voices are simultaneously too loud and too quiet, and my brain just won’t stop moving. I give up and have a nap.
  I have dinner at 6pm, a glass of wine at 7pm and another three glasses of wine by 8pm. I’m in bed by 9pm. I sleep for what seems like the rest of eternity
  Day 4
  I am alone and I am in bed, even though it’s midday. Everything seems wrong, like I’m looking into a mirror that distorts your reflection, except nothing’s been exaggerated right now. My life, my present, is my reality. And I don’t know what to do.
  I go about my day on autopilot. I get tunnel vision, and my legs feel like they’re made of steel. I don’t bother turning on the TV. Mum calls, but I don’t bother answering. What would I say, anyway? While yesterday my brain was running at a million miles per hour, today it’s barely moving a muscle.
  My stomach cries out for me to eat some- thing, so I make two-minute noodles. I eat it, but my tongue doesn’t register the taste. Afterwards, I eat an apple, hoping it’ll up my energy levels, but I still feel like a zombie.
  I’m in bed by 9pm. All I want to do is sleep.
  Day 5
  I am alone. I didn’t turn my phone off last night, and now it’s making a buzzing sound. I don’t really want to answer it, but I check it anyway. It’s from Mum:
  Hi darling, I just wanted to check if everything was okay. You didn’t pick up yesterday. I get the sense you might be depressed. You know you can talk to me anytime. I’m only one phone call away. I love you so much, Mum xx
  I am alone. But maybe, I’m not after all. Maybe, there are people I can rely on to get me and them through this mess. I text Mum back:
  I am depressed. Everything’s so hard right now, but I’m so grateful to have you.Thank you for all you do, and sorry for not picking up yesterday. Maybe we can talk later to- day? Love you. I’ll be okay xx
  And for the first time in days, I genuinely believe it.

  Phoebe Lupton

• Desire of a Truant Morning

  April 23, 2020 1:18 pm Comments Off on Desire of a Truant Morning

  I’ll tell you a story of when you were twelve.
  Climbing the apple tree, you slipped and fell
  among the endless, terminal wheat
  of your father’s fields.
  You scraped both elbows and one knee,
  like Alice, tumbled
  and glimpsed a golden sea
  with white perfect foam on its lips,
  sparkling like a thousand breakfasts.
  Smiling on the lowest branch,
  your sun dress torn,
  your mother’s make-up faded,
  you wrapped your legs about
  the lowest wooden leg,
  with feet airborne.

  Mocka Wacka

• Reflections

  1:07 pm Comments Off on Reflections

  CONTENT WARNING: Body Image

  The mirror and I
  have always had
  a distorted
  blurred
  relationship.
  Seven.
  In adoration of the sparkly princess dresses
  and fairy wings
  You look so pretty
  She will be gorgeous when she’s older
  I see the reflection
  and think-
  This must be what matters most.
  Twelve.
  Pulling on a shirt,
  only hearing
  It isn’t very slimming
  It will look right when I am a smaller size Visions of family members worshipping the scale
  flood in
  I place the shirt back on the rack.
  Thirteen.
  In fear of going to school
  of feeling like a whale
  in a sea of tiny fish

  I’ll change in one of the stalls for PE
  at least there I can hide
  Considering adopting their methods
  of maintaining such small frames.
  Fifteen.
  Feeling more anxiety for the pool party
  that afternoon
  than my final exams
  later that year
  Is it worth going?
  I can’t go there looking like this
  What if I’m the largest there?
  Feigning sickness is easier
  than joining my friends.
  Eighteen.
  No longer in a world of carbon copies.
  Able to attend a college party
  baring a midriff
  Hoping I can join for the next beach trip
  Even though that means buying swimwear.
  The only reprimands
  from peers who have the same thoughts
  who will not allow those voices to remain.
  The mirror and I
  have always had
  a distorted
  blurred
  relationship
  but now
  rather than remaining idle
  and letting the image warp further
  I will clear the glass.

  Anonymous

• Brown Swan

  12:53 pm Comments Off on Brown Swan

  CONTENT WARNING: Racism

  On my first day of primary school I found myself walk- ing into a sea of white. White walls, white uniforms… white faces. These were the faces of the other children. I looked nothing like them and they knew it. The hairs on my back spiked from the intensity of their stares and their white fingers pointing at me. I examined my own light-brown arms, and I knew right then and there that I wasn’t going to fit in at this school. My heart pounded, and I buried my face into my mother’s chest, my tears soaking her t-shirt.
  “I can’t go here,” I cried.
  “Don’t be silly, Daisy,” said Mum. “You’re five, and you know that means you’re a big girl now. And where do big girls go?”
  I didn’t respond.
  “Where do big girls go?”
  She pulled away from me and placed her hands firmly on my shoulders.
  “Big girls go to school.”
  My mum has white skin. I don’t. The darker colour comes from my Sri Lankan dad, but I hardly ever saw him after my parents divorced. No one else I met before I went to school looked like me. As a five- year-old I was so excited to start school and hoped that I would meet different people who might be a little more like me.
  “I don’t like home,” I once told Mum when I was four.
  “You don’t like home?” Mum laughed. “How can you not like home?”
  “Because I can’t see anyone else.”
  What I meant was that I couldn’t see anyone else I could connect with. Little did I know that this wasn’t going to change as I got to school.
  I went to the local primary school. We lived on the outskirts of a wealthy suburban area. Mum didn’t make much money, so we could hardly be called wealthy ourselves, but I just so happened to be in the catchment area for that school. It was a ten minute walk from home, which meant that Mum could take me there in the morning and back in the afternoon without having to drive.
  Someone was giggling behind me. I turned around, and I saw a group of three girls, three very pretty girls with long blonde hair, looking at me and smirking. More tears leaked out of my eyes.

  “They’re laughing at me,” I whispered. “Laughing at you?” said Mum. “Whatever for?”
  “I don’t know,” I said.
  My first day of school was hell. Those blonde girls kept laughing at me, and the teacher did nothing about it. During recess, one of them came up to me and stroked my arm, which made me jump out of my skin.
  “What’s your name?” said the girl.
  “Um, Daisy?” I barely said out loud.
  The girl turned around towards her two friends behind her. All three girls once again erupted into giggles.
  “Daisy Duck!” the girl exclaimed. “Um, what?” I said.
  “You’re Daisy, like Daisy Duck. You know, Disney?”

  “Um, no. Mum doesn’t let me have Disney Channel.”
  More laughs ensued. I kept looking left and right, trying to get my bearings as if I were in Wonder- land like Alice (Mum did let me watch that one).
  What were these girls trying to say?
  The girl at the front moved closer to me and poked me twice in the tummy.
  “You’re brown and ugly,” she said.
  Her two friends probably started laughing again, but I didn’t know for sure, because at that moment, I buried my face in my hands and ran away, sobbing my eyes out.
  That was the first time I remember someone calling me ugly because of the colour of my skin.
  From there on in things didn’t get any worse, exactly, but they didn’t really get any better, either. People called me names every once in a while. I cried a lot. I was lonely most of the time, but I kind of got used to it. I accepted that I was always going to be the ‘Ugly Duckling’, the odd one out, the circle that was trying too hard to fit into a square.
  Then, at the beginning of Year One, a new girl arrived at my school. Her name was Ashanti. She had long black hair, almond-shaped eyes and brown skin. Like me, and like nobody else. On Ashanti’s first day I kept staring at her, and she kept returning my stares with smiles. She’s pretty, I thought. Girls were giggling at Ashanti like they always were at me, and every time they did I tried to give Ashanti a comforting smile, as if to say, You’re not alone.

  Ashanti came up to me after class. She hadn’t spoken very much to the other kids, but she wanted to speak to me.
  “Hi, I’m Ashanti,” she said. “Hi, I’m Daisy,” I returned. She looked slightly above me. “You have really cool hair.”
  My insides began to warm up like a room after the heater’s been on.
  “You have really cool hair too. You have hair like me.”
  Ashanti giggled.
  “You look like a swan,” she said. “Huh?” I replied.
  “You look like a swan,” she repeated. “That’s good. Swans are my favourite animals.”
  “But I don’t look like a swan at all!” I exclaimed. “Swans are, like, white. Like, they have white hair, or whatever. I don’t have white hair.”
  Ashanti grinned.

  “Well, my mummy always tells me that I’m like a brown swan.”
  “There’s no such thing as a brown swan.”
  “Yes there is, Mummy showed me a picture! It’s like in The Ugly Duckling- you know that one? It’s a fairytale about a duckling that’s ugly, but he finds out that he’s a swan? Like, I don’t know if he’s a white swan, but Mummy says that swans can be any colour, so I guess we can be brown swans.”
  I giggled.
  “I thought I looked more like a duck or some- thing, because people call me ‘duck’ sometimes, be- cause my names Daisy, which is the name of a duck in Disney, I think,” I said.
  “But you’re pretty!” said Ashanti. “You’re a brown swan.”
  I’m pretty. I’m a brown swan. Take that, giggly
  Ashanti and I only stayed friends until Year Six. Then she and I went to different high schools, and we never really saw each other again. But I’ll never forget the day we met, when I found out that I didn’t have to be the only brown swan in my world.

  Phoebe Lupton

• When People Smile At Each Other At Traffic Lights

  12:48 pm Comments Off on When People Smile At Each Other At Traffic Lights

  We sat around in 40 ̊C
  in our underwear
  and fan
  and a wet cloth
  over the fan
  and cubes of ice
  in our mouths.
  So many love songs
  about keeping
  each other warm, but
  so few
  about keeping
  each other cool
  in this fucking heat.
  I’m sweating
  thru my balls. It’s
  a real prick.
  You can take em
  off.
  I did /
  was
  naked now.

  It was not
  a pleasant
  or a graceful sight.
  But you didn’t laugh
  and you didn’t even
  look twice.
  Sometime
  after that
  you got it all
  off yrself.
  3 hrs
  we sat there
  watching
  Passion of
  The Christ.
  We didn’t
  even fuck.
  But let me
  assure you—
  this
  this is
  this is a love poem.

  Jerome Arrow

• There’s A Bonsai On My Windowsill

  12:41 pm Comments Off on There’s A Bonsai On My Windowsill

  The world is a fever
  I can feel it in my hair
  I had a dream the other night –
  of a bonsai on my windowsill.
  We were cultivated in a dorm room –
  over twelve-year-old photos,
  looking out into a world
  we were never fully own.
  Your name keeps people guessing,
  your shirt is on my floor –
  There’s a bonsai on my windowsill,
  I can see it from the street –
  it sings to me on the tide,
  it calls to me.
  We mimic the world which will never wait for us.
  Crystal clear,
  I see your grin –
  waiting for me.
  I live for the days of nothingness
  of memories spent beneath your gaze.
  for ever
  searching.
  We live in the world,
  of pebbles and stones –
  a lucky world.
  our roots grow into the windowsill.
  together.
  the dying trinity in your holy renown.
  For the loam beneath the wet soaked amity
  of royal earthy tones,
  lays bare a true impression –
  destined for eternal bliss.
  we find shelter beneath her mist.
  and for once is now
  and now shall find
  That when awoken,
  We –
  Will surely fly.

  Indy Shead

• Carmel

  12:24 pm Comments Off on Carmel

  Two years and one to the day
  did the blood drain from your face
  in that House on the Burley,
  nestled in green and blown by wind,
  forgetting but not forgotten.
  Wearing your warm woolly cap,
  a beanie baby drifting in distant oceans.
  While every night he stood vigil,
  watching your spark flicker
  towards the horizon, the Unreal.
  I held your hand and told you stories
  ending with birds, beaches and
  melting paddle pops.
  Candles spat as I kneeled in that holy place,
  my chamber of reflection.
  Where would you go on this borderless journey?
  As dark shores become black seas
  become glassy clouds.
  Outside on the Burley, small waves wept gently
  against shattered shells.

  This I saw as I walked the Wallace Labyrinth
  following its solitary spiral path to the centre,
  and back out again.
  A momentary kernel of calm surrounded
  by water and weeping willows.
  The Burley, as I see it now, was a mirror
  into the past, the future and eternity,
  both yours and mine.
  Two years and one to the day
  did you stop forgetting.
  Memories once sung with laughing kingfishers
  inexorably faded in that oncoming fog
  hell-bent on dousing all.
  Yet today I feel the fire and beat of wing.
  Forgetting but not forgotten.

  Dominic Page