The Kind Grandmother

The kind grandmother has gone
she who said ‘its not the end of the world,
My darling’, mended the broken toy, the skinned bone,

The fractured heart, the sin against the holy ghost.
‘Those priests’, she said ‘they’ve no reason
To frighten children with their nonsense,
Have they, mother?’

Now I cry all night like a comfortless dog.

Over the ridge the sweet birds are dead
I can see the fires of hell smother
The seas and seeds, the drowned boast
Of Summer, the leaves of the two lovely seasons
The warm and customary blankets of winter
She used to mend with her thread
The end of the world has come, mother.

**

The Survivor

The wind has pinned me
Two hundred and ten feet tall
Free of the fires
In just such a position. Look.
Up past the surviving wall
A Bough caught in the power lines.
I dare not catch a breath
Singing in the wires, not knowing
When I’ll fall
‘You pay for calm with death

**

Helen to Paris

No it is not the same
It can never be the same
Too many melodramas

Scenes in the hospital
Our stained clothes
Will have to be discarded

Your shit my blood
Or vice o fucking versa
They are not the same

The gush of pleasure
Replicated by machines
Can never be the same

Too many last acts
Competed for space
So its goodbye, lover

Goodbye to drama
Goodbye to sin
I’m making my face, darling
May the best story win.

** 

After the Fires

In the wide open space
In the house
There are slammed doors.

In mid ocean
In the focsle
There are cursing whores

On the road to the North
In his harness
this sad beasts roars.

**

Tree

In late summer
Stretches its broken arms out
Already read.
Wonder when it died

Green always has yellow
Behind, pink too many pretences,
Promised me apples all winter,
Lied.

**

Pasolini in Bristol

He saw us twine
but at the end
Divide

By wine
Torpedoed
In the river

And the night
Implacably ate up
Our shadows side by side

As he was driven
Down beyond the mortal harbour
On the tide

**

The cicadas sing

We return to a time of innocent hope.
Cicadas dine again in their crypts.
Etruscan guests rise

from the seabeds where men
were not monsters but mates
And the saint peeling away on the slope

from years of lime and fire, awaits
the consolation of their thighs.

I walked by the sea at midnight
with my nude body a sheet of roiling black
Emperador

You came, compadre, as blond as a wheatfield,
Alabastro tartaruga, bearing little seeds swimming in the tide
Comprador

Of clams, white cliffs, of blood and homicide.
(Here the Tuscan marble liquified, since in September
This will be the scene of
Murder.

**

This selection of poems, which were curated by Lee Cataldi and Sandy Wagner, were among the last poems Noel wrote. The Kind Grandmother and The Survivor are, in fact, his final two poems. 

———————-

Noel Purdon (1941 – 2021)

Noel Purdon, a multifaceted scholar and artist, was raised on the picturesque coast of New South Wales, Australia. His love for sailing and archaeology led him to explore the world, fostering a lifelong passion for travel and discovery. Purdon’s academic pursuits took him to Sydney, Florence, Bristol and Cambridge, where he became a Fellow in English at Trinity Hall in 1967. While at Cambridge, he worked with Raymond Williams to introduce the first cinema lectures within the English Tripos.

In 1974, Purdon returned to Australia and assumed the role of inaugural Head of Screen Studies at Flinders University in Adelaide. His academic leadership and expertise contributed significantly to the study of film and screen arts. In 1984, he began his tenure as the film critic for The Adelaide Review, where he also reviewed literature, opera, and theatre. His work as a critic earned him the Pascall Prize for Creative Criticism in 2002.

Purdon was also an accomplished writer and playwright, having authored three books and a play performed at the Adelaide Festival Fringe. His literary work often draws on his extensive travels and adventures, providing rich narratives of culture, food, and history. His books include Spinning the Globe, Duffy & Snellgrove 1998, and Words for the New Monument (poetry), Seaview Press, 2000. Noel was also a descendent of the explorer, Captain Frances Light, the father of Colonel William Light, the Surveyor General of Adelaide. Noel began writing about Captain Frances Light but it was a project he later put aside saying that he was more excited by poetry. 

In addition, Purdon is also recognized for his roles in films such as Maslin Beach (1997), Marcel and Ardvark (1995), and The Art of Tabloid (1997).

Despite retiring from The Adelaide Review in 2010, Purdon continued to engage in writing and creative projects. His diverse contributions to literature, film, and academia have left a lasting impact on the fields he has explored. He passed away in 2021, on his 80th birthday.

 – Panos Couros & Sandy Wagner