2005 School Magazine

Original Works

Original Works

The Doctor at Dawn

Observe the sleeping shaman In his blue black waking hour: A horse twitch of movement Alighting the spine, Sinuous revolt, bumping hard Against damning daybreak when the past convulses, Constricting the present with spasms of memory, Until the unventured throbs Like wings in the dark. In this sleep sliding night serum Of shifting shucking truth, Drift the broken, bloodied, tagged and trussed, The trestle-tabled dead Splayed bare and dirty dim, Grotesquely comic in cold cut nakedness, Pitifully parade, visceral and vulgar, Atop the operating altar That bore the end. Their palatable purgatory quells cold in his veins, Slippery skinned, blood basted Pretensions of power, Pooling afresh with each dry dark swallow Of the steady, dripping ethereal order. Death, Immune to the catheter crusade, Laughing loud At the flailing smugness of science. Now sickly stirs the medical man, Guilt swilling shipwrecked on the skin of dream, Stretching in seconds of groaning realisation As weighty clandestines Crack Collapse Shriek free with a blistering backward glance, Smashed split open in the Heat of the Moment, Echoing loud in the too late. To their aftermath, the butcher wakes, Cold muscling shell pink crevices, Tense, amid night-strangled shapes. Familiar sounds seep slowly from the surgical bag ...

Miracles, Miscoloured on each bruised blade, Bronzed by a blame that the great are delegated, And demons Which the good are denied. But whispering from the shadow shoals The silence speaks slick among the saved, Swimming, in penitence, each burning, branding attempt, To blind with science, The Will of God Guilt, forgiven on the clumsy crucifix of mortal limitation, And dawn Illuminating the sad glory Of schemes too great to command. Nicola Scott (12E) WINNER 2005 BETTY WOOLCOCK CHALLENGE CUP

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1. Prudence Richardson (8O) 2. Anna Brocklebank (12G) 3. Charlotte Wilson (9M) 4. Claudia O’Rouke (10R)

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Brisbane Girls Grammar School 140

School Magazine 2005 141