The Gentle Water Bird**********IN PROGRESS***********

* * Thanks to the good people at Fisher Library at Syd U, you can find John Shaw Neilson’s Collected Poems (including this one, of course) online here.

as with a number of australian poets, something of a mythology of apology has sprung up around the name and figure of john shaw neilson. “jock” often poses as a simple farmer, too busy chopping down trees and going blind to read too many books, blessed with a natural gift for taking down dictation simply and directly from his pastoral surroundings. this characterisation is seen in john shaw neilson’s correspondence itself, and finds probably its most memorable manifestation in judith wright’s work on him (tho, to be fair, there are more strands than this one present in her poem). much work has been done to place the oddity of a versifying manual labourer comfortably within the field of australian poetry. “jock” becomes some kind of squinting noble savage. and, certainly, the gentle simplicity of neilson’s poetry seems to remain one of its finest qualities.

for, indeed, this poem is an excellent accomplishment in the gentle mode. its nursery-like rhyme scheme, soft cadences, and often childlike vocabulary converge in a quiet, gentle tone. we have personification that wouldn’t be out of place in a children’s book (a “frowning” God, stars that “say” things, the crane as the speaker’s “friend”), and a speaker at “play,” just like any bush kid. the delicate assonance and alliteration in such phrasing as “little children and the Spring,” and even the reference to a (vengeful) God as “terrible and thunder-blue” aid in surrounding this poem with a quiet, wonderful, childlike aura.

simple though the tone may be, it was not brought about in a simple manner. the gentle atmosphere of this poem is bound together by a structure that is almost mathematical in its strictness. the elements of this poem, from the usage of repetition and the rhyme scheme, right through to the imagery and themes, are exactingly plotted upon an axis running like a backbone down the length of the poem, enabling dynamics of a richness quietly stunning in its complexity.

although the most noticeable formal feature of this poem is the simple triplet organisation of the stanzas, these easy rhymes are mobilised to bind the poem with a tightness that is as extensive as it is unobtrusive. phrasing, rhythms and rhyme groupings are repeated and modulated at points crucial to the movement of the imagery and themes. throughout the poem, a vertical plane is established upon which overarching movement progresses - from dark, through mist, to light; and from above to below. refrain-like basic rhyme groupings are repeated at important positions upon this axis to emphasise the turning points – both local and major – in this movement and its various possible significances.

the first stanza serves as a preliminary sketch of the basic variables we are dealing with. the opening line, with its phrase, “in the far days,” establishes a relationship between time and distance, the word “far” being applicable to either. it is then that the underlying axis of the poem is first laid out; the “fear was upon” the speaker, a trajectory which positions an above (the fear’s ), and a below (the “me” upon which it bears).

this mapping is developed in the following stanza, where the rhythm of the poem’s opening line is first repeated, and then slightly modified to allow the first, and most pronounced, enjambment of the poem. this enables “God,” the upper limit within the poem, to be appropriately emphasised. God is figured as “frowning through” the dimness, at once reaching the base of the axis from its upper extreme and being revealed as a source of fear, indeed terror.

the opening processes of the poem effect a repeated mapping of the axis from above to below, saturated with an atmosphere of fear, trembling and dimness. the reader is directed back to the far, dim days in which the thunder-blue God and discoloured creeds (st. 3) are oppressive forces. light coloured flowers and the rainbow are situated between the speaker (lower limit) and God (upper limit), yet associated with the speaker through their shared trembling. Here we have the “white and cream” flowers and the rainbow threatened by a “thunder-blue” God and “discoloured” creeds. Thus, the initial movement is one of darkness from above pressing on lightness below, resulting in both dimness and trembling.

the movement of the fifth stanza enacts a confusingly complex interplay of darkness and light. in reading it, we first come upon the darkness of night, in which there are “many stars,” which could be reasonably understood as points of illumination. however, in the dynamics of this stanza, this understanding is almost immediately undercut by the enjambed second line, where we learn that the stars “say/dark things,” and that this darkness even remains in daylight. as the reading eyes move across the text, they thus encounter firstly darkness ("night"), then (assumedly) light ("stars"), quickly jumping to darkness again ("dark things") moving in light ("day"). a lot of work is being done in this stanza, which ends with a recapitulation of the opening theme (notice how the phrase from the first stanza"(f)ear was upon me" is repeated at this point).