Rochford Street Review

Issue 40.  2024:2

   

Two Canticles

At a cottage by the sea I tackle Francis Webb, curious about

his poetry from Cap and Bells. Outside a wild spring ocean’s

curled waves tussle on the tide, comb to the edge, like spoonbills

probing every squint of sand and wrack. The horizon

 

is drawn-in, appropriate for this day in this ruptured world.

The sun finds thin spots to break through clouds, blades the sea

with thousands of stars and as quickly is blocked. In his poems

Francis tools words in obscurity and I must wait for the rare 

 

glimmer to shine through, to touch their thousand stars before

they meld into his shadowed world. With torch and compass

I grope through the labours of Hospital Night and wait in the

dark for the sound of winged ones in the swaddled air of his

 

suite Ward Two. I once met a Benedictine nun who knew 

Francis Webb, as an escapee from Parramatta Mental Hospital.

He knocked at her convent back door. Frail, lost, clutching

a book of poetry. Eyes eminently human, beaconed his ragged

 

struggle. His voice garbled: I am not seeking money or food 

but peace. He scribbled out for her his poem Five Days Old.

Then a lonely, derelict figure slouched out the gate. His words

frisk the heroic-journey, explorers’ struggle, like one who holds

 

a shell, turns it over and over for light, shots of colour, as he

tackles the one-journey common to us all. His poems of 

The Canticle echo another Francis who wrote Il Cantico, 

who praised glimpses of brother sun  and sister moon through

 

tender, frayed clouds, who walked barefoot, high-walled Assisi: 

its olive groves, vineyards, lanes, paths of cobbled stone, 

searching too for peace. Falling on his knees, face in his hands

he humbly made himself its instrument, finding the meaning 

 

only in the search. He threw off worldly garb, gold and plumes

donned a court jester’s cap and bells, reverberating touch of 

birdsong his bedrock. Through a darkling glass are two canticles

hundreds of years apart. Each Francis dances on fear’s altar. Both 

 

be fools, taunted, for gnawing life to the bone. Both seeing beauty

in the tiny not the immense. Outside, flocks of sea gulls skim 

the southerly, skate on the edge. I listen to their skirl on the air, 

wayfarers, like the ocean in its unceasing quest. 

Colleen Keating

Winner of the Phillipa Holland Poetry 2024 with Eastwood/Hills FAW (Fellowship of Australian Writers)

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Colleen Keating is a Sydney poet. Her writing explores the wonder and paradox of nature with the harsh realities of life, justice, equality and the increasing threat to our natural environment. Her poem, Fifth Symphony was recently awarded Highly commended in the Poetic Christi Press poetry competition and published in the new Anthology A New Day Dawns 2024. Colleen has published six collections of poetry, including two award-winning verse novels, Hildegard of Bingen: A poetic journey and Olive Muriel Pink: her radical & idealistic life. Her newly published book is The Dinner Party: A poetic reflection. (2023) All are available through Ginninderra Press. Colleen writes on Ku-ring-gai land in Sydney and Darkinjung on the Central Coast NSW.

Also welcomed to be published by Michael Griffith.author of Cap and Bells