We yearn for silence and are haunted by the drone of lawn-mowers. Within this apparent normality an aroused self may assert itself or begin to float away in confusion walking down my path, i expect to meet myself hanging around the front door, a refugee on the verandah, pale face and misleading eyes which leads, at best, to some kind of epiphany in the kitchen. Friends and loved ones must be warned against a complacency they think they have earned. S talin believed that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of mankind. There is little fear of similar reaction in the happy democracy of Tasmania where Peter Hay has thrived to produce his first collection.
Politicians are good fellows down there.
Hay himself has been welcomed to their inner chambers, at one time serving as senior private secretary to the Minister for Environment and Planning. His experience and concerns are explicit in many of these poems. He saves us from decisions, Deflates the complex, Banishes doubt. Blunts the horns of courage and cowardice. In action they discover equally passionate souls whose ideas about those decisions and plans contradict their own.