'waiting for cancer is Manfred Jurgensen's sixth collection of poetry. His new work achieves a striking balance between subjective intensity and objective restraint. The themes of these poems range from attempts to capture objects of the immediate environment to invocations of the Australian landscape, from multiculturalism to the politics of experience, from epigrammatic reflections to passionate exhortations on the nature of love.'
'To something near perfection in his chosen mode, Jurgensen has spoken the unspeakable…Where honest spontaneity and passion cannot make poets of everyone, a writer like Jurgensen makes poetry from passion and spontaneity.'
(Elizabeth Perkins, Image)
waiting for cancer,
Queensland Community Press,
Brisbane 1985
midnight
it was as if the moon
had tried to touch the earth,
as if it shone too soon,
before our distant birth.
it was as if the light
shone to direct our view
to a forgotten sight,
to stars that we once knew.
it was as if the word
had come to set me free,
a native spirit heard
the call and let me be.
from: outback
never-never
shadows on a dirt road,
my image cast in sand;
the truck stops to unload
its freight of contraband.
the driver sheds his skin,
two boxes and a bag;
he bears it with a grin,
his lips sealed by a fag.
i see our shadows dance
on this day's outworn track
and know there is no chance
of ever coming back.
the line
from out of nowhere it
stands like experience;
once built, you never quit
mending the dingo fence.
daring death, sheepish life
thorned by the one absence;
your white man's dreams survive
mending the dingo fence.
i see the wired emu
caught in my barbed defence;
the freedom i eschew
mending the dingo fence.