Title: The invention of fire
First published: 1976
Description: Under every cathedral
there’s a spring of pure emptiness 
architects and priests search out these springs 
wherever they find one a cathedral’s built

without cathedrals emptiness would water the land
it would flow through the long wet lashes of grass
and under the massed white and yellow flowers 
under the faint red filmy leaves of spring
and over the sparkling stones and around the roots of the trees

it would find out valleys and engrave them
with its own downward crashing capture of light
it would swell into rivers shaded and wept by willows.
and join a sea forever empty of boats
forever empty of children playing on its shores
whom it aches to embrace and whose castles only 
it could erase

inside each cathedral a fish floats
high in stone air and in a sky of glass
he is the sun’s fish dreaming of that spring
and in his eye we swim to his dreamt heaven
around its shores little houses are built
and children clap at the incense of fires
Subjects: Poetry
Places: Australia
LC classification: PR9619.3.T3 I5