“The World Went Clanking” by George Genovese
The world went clanking like an old tin can, a cranking babbler on its wind-whirled way, tossed on immodestly, without restraint, and little mercy from the tar it spanked;
the world went battered with a pent-up plaint,
a clatter, clamor, and a scared man’s stutter,
cast off indifferently, slurped dry and spent, its dying rattle gurgling in a gutter...
Marvel of metal, molten toil of eons,
tin drawn resplendently from deep-delved ore,
the gifted fruit of sifted earth refined
to shining artifact of smelted form,
the miracle of image that adorns
your body rendered with iconic graphics
encodes the ancient reach of language forged
of elder wisdom’s stilled and wizened call.
Before you stopped, while yet you rolled, there rang
the meaning of millennial aesthetics
a logo’s seal for those of sacred scrolls.
As enigmatic now as hieroglyphics
and casually discarded as the rind
of fervency scooped hollow of its pith,
the moment’s marrow and its sense made shallow
lie there excreted like a speechless myth.
Token of utility, no reverence more
unites the labors for a hallowed earth,
the maker working with transcendent awe
strives now a science of material wealth.
Dark cipher of unconscious metaphor,
lisped oracle of the absented soul,
knowledge that lured us once to be as gods
has left us disappointed, numb and scored.
That spiritual sun essential to our goal
has dwindled to a semblance of literal gold,
a solid stand-in for a faithless void,
our tabernacle smashed and left despoiled.
Artist’s Statement
For me, writing is a way of exploration into things that make me wonder or puzzled, or that strike me as worthy of sharing. At the heart of it is my awe for human existence, its beauty, joy and the troubling suffering that comes with it. When engaged in that practise I feel most complete because then the work affirms my connection to the human family. Essentially, it is a quest for social integration and understanding and when I feel most human in all the finer senses of that word.
George Genovese has published five volumes of poetry, Time Steals Softer 2007, The Essential Space of Play 2012, Love Letters to the World 2016, A Gloomorous Book In Verse 2019, Mind Drift, 2022 and a collection of short stories, The Bookworm and Other Stories 2022 with Ginninderra Press. In 2024 he published a chapbook of fiction, Sky, with Poetose Press and Cages with Poetose Online Journal. He collaborated extensively with Australian Composer, Lawrence Whiffin on projects setting his poetry to Whiffin’s inventive and colorful music. In 2010, Whiffin composed a song cycle based on Genovese’s Time Steals Softer for accomplished bass singer, Jerzy Kozlowski and virtuoso pianist Harvey which was performed by the Astra Chamber Musical Ensemble under the direction of John McCaughey. He has contributed lyrics to two CD releases by Mario C. Genovese, Crossover 2006 and In the Flow 2019, and collaborated with him on a CD collection of his poetry set to music, A Community of Tree 2023. He has written for The Age and Independent Australia.