for Luisa Valenzuela
Queenie
the cow from India
is
in Argentina
because
she is famous
for
her artistic sensibility
she
has been invited
to
an Expositión
of masks from around the world
of masks from around the world
clattering
down the stairs
on
her hoofed feet
she
stands looking around
searching
for her relatives
she
says apart from one
fine-faced
heifer from Italy
the
rest are almost scary
they
are big like her water buffalo
cousins
back in Chennai
large
horns the type you don't
want
to mess with here or there
we
cows live to play dress-ups
put
on some stage make-up
so
we can be anonymous
just for a while
so
many wearying things
rest
on our shoulders as we pull
and
carry haul and hoist
no
one notices our intellect
the
culture we've built
in
just about every continent
here in South America
the humans make masks
so they can pretend to be us
walk about looking gorgeous
in their red yellow and green
India
has the best culture
no
they are not cults
they
are much more than that
and
we like to keep
our
secrets to ourselves
Queenie
would like to return
the
favour and invite
her
friend Luisa Valenzuela
to
come and join her
in
city or country life
in
faraway India the south
she
says has more to show
maybe
you can read some
stories
to us in return
Wonderfully playful - what amazing cow masks!
ReplyDeleteOh Queenie you are just fabulous.
ReplyDeleteI love this, Susan!
ReplyDeletelovely and so playful!
ReplyDeleteThank you all . Queenie is a character from my book Cow.
ReplyDeleteP.S. A trivia item, Susan. I can't paste the image here alas, but my grandfather Stewart Schackne had a book published in 1940 in America called "Rowena the Skating Cow" - which I had read to me many times when I was small and which I eventually read myself many times. Years later, I would read Les Murray's poems, and wonder at their power. Then I read yours. How all of it is connected.
ReplyDeleteNot at all trivial. I read poem about cows by Les Murray too but could never find it again. Thanks.
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DeleteCATTLE ANCESTOR
Darrambawli and all his wives, they came feeding from the south-east
back in that first time. Darrambawli is a big red fellow,
terrible fierce. He scrapes up dust, singing, whirling his bullroarers
in the air: he swings them and they sing out Crack! Crack!
All the time he's mounting his women, all the time more kulka,
more, more, smelling their kulka and looking down his nose.
Kangaroo and emu mobs run from him, as he tears up their shelters,
throwing the people in the air, stamping out their fires.
Darrambawli gathers up his brothers, all making that sad cry mar mar:
He initiates his brothers, the Bulluktruk. They walk head down in a line
and make the big blue ranges. You hear their clinking noise in there.
Darrambawli has wives everywhere, he has to gallop back and forth,
mad for their kulka. You see him on the coast, and on the plains.
They're eating up the country, so the animals come to spear them:
You have to die now, you're starving us. But then Waark the crow
tells Darrambawli Your wives, they're spearing them. He is screaming,
frothing at the mouth, that's why his chest is all white nowadays.
Jerking two knives, he screams I make new waterholes! I bring the best song!
He makes war on all that mob, raging, dotting the whole country.
He frightens the water-snakes; they run away, they can't sit down.
The animals forget how to speak. There is only one song
for a while. Darrambawli must sing it on his own.
Thanks Rob. This is one of them but there was another (unless my memory has twisted things) based on a story from a Sanskrit text, probably the Mahabharata, but not usre. it was abit hsorter than this poem. I will chase it up again as I am now puzzled all over again,
DeleteOh, Queenie ,I love you. What an uplifting poem and series of images, Susan.
ReplyDeleteThanks Sarah. How did your reading go?
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