Judith Beveridge
Judith Beveridge is the author of seven previous collections of poetry, most recently Sun Music: New and Selected Poems, which won the 2019 Prime Minister’s Prize for Poetry. Many of her books have won or been shortlisted for major prizes, and her poems widely studied in schools and universities. She taught poetry at the University of Sydney from 2003-2018 and was poetry editor of Meanjin 2005-2016. She is a recipient of the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal and the Christopher Brennan Award for lifetime achievement. Her latest collection is Tintinnabulum (Giramondo, 2024).
Listening to Cicadas
Thousands of soda chargers detonating simultaneously
at the one party
*
The aural equivalent of the smell of cheese fermented
in the stomach of a slaughtered goat
*
The aural equivalent of downing eight glasses
of caffeinated alcohol
*
Temperature: the cicada’s sound-editing software
*
At noon, treefuls of noise: jarring, blurred, magnified—
sound being pixelated
*
The audio equivalent of flash photography and strobe lighting
hitting disco balls and mirror walls
*
The sound of cellophane being crumpled in the hands
of sixteen thousand four-year olds
*
The aural equivalent of platform shoes
*
The aural equivalent of skinny jeans
*
All the accumulated cases of tinnitus suffered
by fans of Motörhead and Pearl Jam
*
Microphone feedback overlaid with the robotic fluctuations
of acid trance music
*
The stultifying equivalent of listening to the full chemical name
for the human protein titin which consists of 189,819 letters
and takes three-and-a-half hours to pronounce
*
The aural equivalent of garish chain jewellery
*
A feeling as if your ear drums had expanded into the percussing surfaces
of fifty-nine metallic wobble boards
*
The aural equivalent of ant juice
*
Days of summer: a sonic treadwheel
Peppertree Bay
It’s lovely to linger here along the dock,
to watch stingrays glide among the pylons,
to linger here and see the slanted ease
of yachts, to hear their keels lisp, to see
wisps of spray swirl up, to linger along
the shore and see rowers round their oars
in strict rapport with calls of a cox,
to watch the light shoal and the wash scroll,
and wade in shallows like a pale-legged
bird, sand churning lightly in the waves,
terns flying above the peridot green
where water deepens, to watch dogs
on sniffing duty scribble their noses over
pee-encoded messages, and see a child
make bucket sandcastles tasselled
with seaweed, a row of fez hats, and
walk near rocks, back to the jetty where
fishermen cast out with a nylon swish,
hoping no line will languish, no hook
snag under rock, to watch jellyfish rise
to the bay’s surface like scuba divers’
bubbles, pylons chunky with oyster shells
where a little bird twitters chincherinchee
chincherinchee from its nest under the slats,
to feel that the hours have the rocking
emptiness of a long canoe, so I can relax
and feel grateful for the confederacies
of luck and circumstance that bring
me here because today I might spy
a seahorse drifting in the seagrass
with the upright stance of a treble clef,
or spot the stately flight of black cockatoos,
their cries like the squeaking hinges
of an oak door closing in a drafty church,
to walk near the celadon pale shallows
again where I’ll feel my thoughts drift
on an undertow into an expanse where
they almost disappear, and give thanks
again to the profluent music of the waves,
and for all the ways that light exalts
the world, for my eyes and brain changing
wavelengths into colour, the pearly
pinks of the shells, the periwinkles’ indigo
and mauve, the sky’s methylene blue.
These poems are published in Tintinnabulum (Giramondo,2024)