I'm doing bruce dawe's enter without so much as knocking:
Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.


Blink, blink. HOSPITAL. SILENCE.
Ten days old, carried in the front door in his
mother's arms, first thing he heard was
Bobby Dazzler on Channel 7:
Hello, hello hello all you lucky people and he
really was lucky because it didn't mean a thing
to him then...
A year or two to settle in and
get acquainted with the set-up; like every other
well-equipped smoothly-run household, his included
one economy-size Mum, one Anthony Squires-
Coolstream-Summerweight Dad, along with two other kids
straight off the Junior Department rack.

When Mom won the
Luck's-A-Fortch Tricky-Tune Quiz she took him shopping
in the good-as-new station-wagon (£ 495 dep. at Reno's).
Beep, beep. WALK. DON'T WALK. TURN
LEFT. NO PARKING. WAIT HERE. NO
SMOKING. KEEP CLEAR/OUT/OFF GRASS. NO
BREATHING EXCEPT BY ORDER. BEWARE OF
THIS. WATCH OUT FOR THAT. My God (beep)
the congestion here just gets (beep)
worse every day, now what the (beep beep) does
that idiot think he's doing (beep beep and BEEP).

However, what he enjoyed most of all was when they
went to the late show at the local drive-in, on a clear night
and he could see (beyond the fifty-foot screen where
giant faces forever snarled screamed or make
incomprehensible and monstrous love) a pure
unadulterated fringe of sky, littered with stars
no-one had got around to fixing up yet: he'd watch them
circling about in luminous groups like kids at the circus
who never go quite close enough to the elephant to get kicked.

Anyway, pretty soon he was old enough to be
realistic like every other godless
money-hungry back-stabbing miserable
so-and-so, and then it was goodbye stars and the soft
cry in the corner when no-one was looking because
I'm telling you straight, Jim, it's Number One every time
for this chicken, hit wherever you see a head and
kick whoever's down, well thanks for a lovely
evening Clare, it's good to get away from it all
once in a while, I mean it's a real battle all the way
and a man can't help but feel a little soiled, himself,
at times, you know what I mean?

Now take it easy
on those curves, Alice, for God's sake,
I've had enough for one night, with that Clare Jessup,
hey, ease up, will you, watch it --

Probity & Sons, Morticians,
did a really first-class job on his face
(everyone was very pleased) even adding a
healthy tan he'd never had, living, gave him back for keeps
the old automatic smile with nothing behind it,
winding the whole show up with a
nice ride out to the underground metropolis
permanent residentials, no parking tickets, no taximeters
ticking, no Bobby Dazzlers here, no down payments,
nobody grieving over halitosis
flat feet shrinking gums falling hair.

Six feet down nobody interested.

Blink, blink. CEMETERY. Silence.

the assignment requires us to make a visual representation of the poem which demonstrates the major ideas or issues explored in the poem, in any form e.g. picture, drawing, artwork, sculpture, graphic, collage etc.
suprisingly, there are no other similar topics concerning bruce dawe's poems.

any suggestions are welcome.

Why do they have to be so "cross curriculum" and make you do art for literature?

I can see this as a collage. There are a lot of concrete images in the poem that should be easy to find illustrations for, baby in mother's arms, family group etc. You could build up the layers and then cut off suddenly

Linda, I believe it's just another manifestation of the fools or knaves (take your pick) who are in charge of education in many Australian States and apparently doing their best to dumb down and subvert the traditional syllabus. It's becoming a hot political issue here.

As a matter of interest myu, what year are you in, and what State?

Though it seems useless from a literary point of view, I suppose you have to comply with this assignment.

The Latin quote at the beginning of this poem suggests its overall theme. It means 'remember, man, that because you are dust, you will return to dust'. Dawe plays this with a variation. He has his unnamed man emerging initially from 'Blink, blink. HOSPITAL SILENCE' and ending in 'Blink, blink. CEMETERY SILENCE'. In between, the man apparently has an oppressed life with little consolation. All this is hard to illustrate coherently, unless you have Michael Leunig's talent for drawing some kind of comic strip.

Linda's suggestion of a collage therefore seems excellent to me. Perhaps you can slip into it an image of someone wearing a 'Life's a bitch, then you die' T-shirt.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/2006 03:04AM by IanB.