Life-and-Destruction                                                            Page 27

Clear vision sees that "The living present is always marked by death".²⁸ Love-

and-death, joy-and-fear, creation-and destruction are inseparable. "The Killer"

(C.P. p.50) is the other half of "The Maker".

The day was clear as fire,

the birds sang frail as glass,

when thirsty I came to the creek

and fell by its side in the grass.

The day of "The Killer" begins "as clear as fire", in full consciousness with no

awareness of shadow. Everything is as clear as at noon. There is an implicit

warning only in the sense that in the Australian bush on a "day as clear as fire-

actual  destructive fire is always a possibility. But the awareness of the

wanderer is not on that. The bird's song ,”as frail as glass", is the sound heard

 in the bush when the sun is high; something quiet, like the tinkling of fine glass

unlike the chatter or full song of morning or evening. Everything seems rather   

lush, after recent rain. The poet is "thirsty" and falls by the side of the creek to

drink:

My breast on the bright moss

and shower-embroidered weeds,

my lips to the live water

I saw him turn in the reeds.

All her senses are alive - to the feeling of her body, her breast pressed against

the soft moss, the sight of the raindrops on the weeds, the taste of the "live"

and life-giving water. Then, in an instant, "black horror", chaos, springs "from

the dark":

Black horror sprang from the dark

in a violent birth.

The enveloping calm is shattered. The frail glass scatters in a million flying

pieces as the bush erupts in violence. There is a-strange realization that even

here in this moment of terror, the "black horror" springing from the dark. is a

kind of birth, "a violent birth" What is born immediately is another violence: