The Tree Killers

I was preparing to post the poem below which is about the pathology of those who kill trees to improve their views, or because they dislike the trees shedding leaves, or because trees cast shade over their gardens, or because trees 'harbour' birds that wake them, or because possums inhabit the hollows, or because they wish to 'develop' an area, or because they feel a neighbour is encroaching (via a tree) on their 'rights, and so on. This is a global disease, but has very particular inflections in Australia where it is not uncommon to hear literal hatred expressed towards tree life. The expression 'tree huggers' is mainstream and used pejoratively on bumper stickers. 

In this colonial/neo-colonial nation, the tree too often represents something to be overcome, to be defeated as part of the 'pastoral' control of space. Ancient trees are especially vulnerable, and today another grotesque case of tree murder is being discussed, with 'state officials' by their own admission having a hand in it (and tree drs and pseudo-arborists, 'pruners' and 'loppers') — an 800-year-old peppermint tree. 

This should be scrutinised and critiqued on a global scale, and is further evidence of the abuse of country that underwrites the colonial control still so dominant in Australia. This should never be able to happen, but it happens frequently. Too much of it locates around leisure and providing 'access to nature' — how many carparks, trails through forests, and so on are decimated in the name of tourism and entertainment? It's remorseless. 

Though there is the obvious large-scale bush clearing and destruction of forest around the country through logging (even where there's a cessation of old-growth logging, miners still make massive inroads... e.g. bauxite industry in WA's southwest jarrah forests), mining, housing developments degradation of forest by leisure activities, much tree killing is done 'privately' and secretively. 

In the last decade we've seen 400-year-old jarrah trees killed in the Challar Forest near Walpole and also the famous Gelorup Jarrah (300-400 years old) was 'mysteriously' felled during the horror discussions about the route of the Bunbury/Gelorup bypass (we witnessed the extent of this destruction a couple of weeks ago).  Among others! 

This poem focusses on the classic drill at the base and poison technique, much favoured by urban tree haters and also by rural retrogrades (sometimes arguing 'fire safety' as a trigger expression if they are caught... or some other such specious go-to...).  I was appalled to find that there's actually a Quora that discusses how to secretly kill 'unwanted' neighbour's trees, outlining herbiciding to 'girdling' (ring-barking... a favourite colonial-settler land-clearing technique, absorbed into the urban as part of the furtive neo-colonialism of Australian cities). People fuse their pathologies of tree-hate (and all it implies) into communities built on distance and anonymity. The world is killed anonymously.

To hate trees in this way is to hate the very essence and core of being. Without trees, the biosphere will be finished. The aim to control, confine and limit tree-life is part of a pathology of colonial control that merges with a desire for a legacy 'built' out of pioneering (as verb) habitat into conformity to try to (en)force disconnection from its sacredness.

The Tree Killers

 

 

To evade detection

they seem to come at night

with muffled drills

 

and slick injections

of herbicide

or cocktails of poison,

 

attacking the base

of the trunk

while lusting

 

for the roots — tap roots,

heart roots, lateral roots

even the fine and sinker roots;

 

to undress the crown

to suit their vision

of clarity and ‘silence’ —

 

bird homes removed,

leaf obscurantism in their vision

of skyscraper or oil-slicked

 

river, waking to traffic

without birdsong.

These tree killers

 

seem unaware

of the nature of souls,

poisoning opposite

 

a school, destroying

an ecosystem between sea

and cliffs, operating

 

as lone hands

or as paid-up hitters

to do the dirty work

 

of the moneyed

(the no proof who, me?

we're entitled brigade).

 

And sometimes,

it’s out of a deep ‘need’

for neatening the world,

 

for removing boughs

and twigs and interference

from their ambits;

 

it seems an untreated

pathology

given credence

 

by every mass

clearing of bushland

and forest, of trees

 

that have managed

to hang on till now,

offering their shade.

 

 

            John Kinsella

 

Cécile Sauvage, "Child, pale embryo" (translation)

By Tracy

This is an early draft translation & I may still change it quite a bit, but it gives an idea of this remarkable poem and poet, pictured here with her children.

By Unknown author - The Life of Messiaen, Christopher Dingle, p.5, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5552358

Cécile Sauvage (1883-1927), Child, pale embryo...

 

Child, pale embryo, within the waters you sleep

Like a little dead god in a coffin of glass.

What you taste now is the lightweight existence

Of a fish that’s drowsing under reeds in the deep.

You live like a plant, and your unawareness

Entirely artless, is a lily half-opened

And it does not even know out of what profound

Layer within earth’s breast it is drawing substance.

 

My sap runs throughout you and lends you its soul,

Sweet bee-less flower whose brow bears no trace of dew.

Nonetheless the great grasping expanse demands you

And in my small refuge causes you to tremble.

 

Into the soil of my flesh, young and motherly,

You do not know how many threads your flesh has set,

And your gaze I already see so well will not 

Ever learn from books this innocent mystery.

 

How tight and close I hold you, who can know?

You belong to me as the dawn does to the plain,

Round about you my life is wrapped warm and woollen

To ward off the chill as your limbs secretly grow.

 

I surround, encompass you like the green almond

That closes its jewel-case on the milky kernel,

Like the cottony folds of the soft pod, the boll

With which the silken and infant seed is covered.

 

The tears that spring to my eyes, how well you know them,

They have the deep tang of my blood upon your lips,

You know what fervour, what burning fever slips,

Unleashes in my veins a fierce, relentless stream.

 

Toward my dark night I can see your arms venture

As if they would caress what is unknown in me,

That point where anyone constricted painfully

Feels an estrangement from everything in nature.

 

Listen, now while I am still within your hearing,

Leave the impression of your child-mouth in my breast,

Respond to my love with your obedient flesh

What other entwinement will ever seem so strong?

 

In days to come when I shall live flameless, single,

When you are a man and living less for my sake,

Over the times when I was with you I’ll look back,

Times when there were two of us at play in my soul.

 

For we do play sometimes. I give you my heart, see,

Vivid as a jewel flashing its mirages,

I give to you my eyes in which clear images

Upon a cool, fresh lake are rowing languidly.

 

Those are golden swans that seem as if they were ships,

Set upon the water, nymphs that belong to night.

Upon their brows the moon is dipping its bright hat

And they for you alone have smiles upon their lips.

 

When later on you take your early steps, likewise

The rose, the sun, the tree, the turtledove will make

In the light of new grace that guides your every look

The old familiar moves that you will recognise.

 

But you’ll no longer know upon which flaxen shore

Great silver fish that used to give you rings were found

Nor upon which hidden prairie’s secret ground

Lambs with their naive feet once leapt in such ardour.

 

For never again will my heart that speaks with yours

This hot and silent language made of our thoughts

Be able to fasten anew the loosened knots:

Dawn does not know the dark from which it emerges.

No, you’ll be unaware which Venus pure and fair

Dropped the flame of a kiss into your very blood,

The mystery’s anguish where art will be shattered,

And this taste for feeding, nurturing shy despair.

 

Nothing more of me will you know on that fatal

Day when you hurl yourself into rough life for good,

O my little mirror who see my solitude

Leaning anxiously at the edge of your crystal.

 

                                                (Translated by Tracy Ryan) 

 

With thanks to Peter Dayan for pointing me to this poet.

 

 

Celebrating John Kinsella's Collected Poems (UWAP) at City of Perth Library last night

By Tracy

In addition to John himself, participating readers & brilliant poets were: Alan Fyfe, Caitlin Maling, Cass Lynch, Emily Sun, Scott-Patrick Mitchell, Siobhan Hodge & Tim Kinsella — with introductory talks by Tony Hughes d'Aeth and Lakshmi Kanchi.

Not everyone who took part is shown here — some of my images didn't come up as I'd hoped! Some were taken by me, others by Wendy Kinsella.

Thanks to UWA Publishing, City of Perth Library, WA Poets... and many others.

John Kinsella

Scott-Patrick Mitchell

John with Will Yeoman

Part of the audience

Mar Bucknell with John Kinsella, Rohit Kanchi

Tony Hughes d'Aeth

Lakshmi Kanchi & audience

Cass Lynch & audience

Emily Sun speaks

Tim Kinsella reads

John Kinsella speaks

Tim Kinsella reading

Scott-Patrick Mitchell speaks

Emily Sun

Caitlin Maling

Lakshmi Kanchi

Tim Kinsella

Tracy Ryan

Peter Wheeler in foreground, Mar Bucknell & Rohit Kanchi behind

John Kinsella, Lakshmi Kanchi, Steve Mickler

Lakshmi Kanchi & John Kinsella

Tony Hughes d'Aeth

Celebrating Kwame Dawes

The following poem is taken from Kwame Dawes' and my forthcoming collection with Peepal Tree, Mortality. I post it here to celebrate Kwame's superb collection Sturge Town, originally published with Peepal Tree in the UK and out in August with Norton in the USA. I also celebrate his generosity of spirit in dialoguing with me about poetry and poetics over the last decade. Kwame's poetry works to offer ways through the contradictions and crises of physical existence while maintaining its role as witness. A complex sense of the spiritual shifts and aligns with both personal and collective timelines making it a deeply focussed engagement with self, family, 'place', music, literature, 'the arts', politics, friendship and communities.

49.

This is a day when your “being out there”
makes all the difference for me, Kwame.
    I read your poem and journey
with it, if not with you. I am not limited
to my own perceptions, care of your grace

and generosity. Your poems increase me
as prayer or contemplation does, and in
    other ways that transition across
language, across topographies 
and demographics. I see remarkable

things after reading them, disturbing
things after reading them, and follow
    the branching roots of each line
simultaneously. Sky, people, and earth.
Lives encountered and recounted.

And on this day when your “being out there”
makes all the difference, we here contemplate
    the months to come – said to be the worst
summer before it has even got fully under-
way. Each day we prepare until we are at its end.

We’ve known each other long enough now, Kwame,
to note the variations in repetitions, the way
    cycles loop over themselves and entangle.
We know the limits and incredible
expansiveness of action, and we know

each other’s atmospheres of mortality.
Every poem is a surprise and a confirmation.
    Every poem is the one that follows 
and starts our conversation over again.
This pattern holds it shape, then doesn’t.

    John Kinsella