Correspondences                                                          Page 55

"Five Senses" (C.P. p.186) focuses a universe of "meaning, acts and

presences", through the senses, into the being of a human person who, in a way

becomes that universe. The poem spins a thread of sounds, silences, shapes

and colours, seeing it as

thread for that weaver,

whose web within me growing

follows beyond my knowing

some pattern sprung from nothing -

a rhythm that dances

and is not mine.

In "Connections" (C.P. p.421), the perfume of "tiny clusters of whitebread

heath" carries the wanderer to associations with stars, whose light "can pass

right through me", to memories of childhood where the key of a buried sardine

tin, "Resurrected... might unlock the universe." This unlikely connection makes

for a startling image of the interconnectedness of everything with everything

else, no matter how contrary to each other they may seem..

One of the loveliest examples of the interrelatedness of things is "Night

Herons" (C.P. p.175). They come out of the dusk, "after a day's rain". They

walk, "the two tall herons", down the centre of a wet, gleaming road, the light

deepening and reflecting "growing yellow... daffodil colours". Children look

and see and tell. Faces are pressed to windows that flower "with eyes", those

other '”windows" of the soul. In its lines and its setting, the poem is tall and

calm and dignified like the regal birds. Its tone is of great solemnity and

wonder. The silence of the poem is reminiscent of that attending the ritual of

"Gum-Trees Stripping".