August 2021

Arts & Letters

Time remaining

By Sarah Holland-Batt
New poetry from the award-winning writer and critic

Like rolled beads of mercury

silver bubbles fly up silently

in the mineral water by my father’s bed.

 

A bag of Hartmann’s solution

hangs in the air like a sling

of trapped rain.

 

A chartreuse teardrop

blinks on the infusion pump’s screen.

The gauge reads Time Remaining.

 

In this void of time

in which my father remains—

I want to say, is remaining

 

present continuous—he returns to me.

Hello sweetheart, he says blurrily.

I’m just trying to get the damned thing working.

 

And as if I can see what he’s seeing

I ask, Is it plugged in?

He says, I’m beginning to wonder

 

and he’s gone again, eyes swivelling

through the morphine, rolling

in the mulberry velvet of it

 

and I can see it’s true: my father is beginning

to wonder, he is at the verge

of something he is only starting

 

to comprehend the shape of

as if he’s standing at the delta

of a huge muddy river mouth

 

where the mackerel-backed sky and water

mirror each other’s enormities

and the eye cannot find the horizon

 

between them—a demarcation known only

to those who wade in, full immersion.

It is right that at the end of his life

 

my father’s final feeling is wonder—

not awe, not joy, but wonder—

cousin of astonishment and doubt,

 

which in the Old English

also means to magnify—

the way his time remaining

 

dilates and shrinks, is made

both infinitesimally small and infinite:

a day, an hour, a minute.

Sarah Holland-Batt

Sarah Holland-Batt is the author, most recently, of The Jaguar and Fishing for Lightning.

From the front page

Photo of Animal Justice Party MP Georgie Purcell outside Parlament House with rescued greyhound Graham

Dog day afternoon

Animal welfare concerns have long plagued the greyhound racing industry, but in Victoria a campaign from covert investigators now has a parliamentarian leading the fight

Illustration by Jeff Fisher

Mars attracts

Reviving the Viking mission’s experiments may yet find life as we know it on Mars, but the best outcome would be something truly alien

Close-up photograph of Anne Summers, 2017

How to change a bad law

The campaign to repair the single parenting payment was a model of how research and advocacy can push government to face the cruel effects of a policy and change course

Installation view of the Kandinsky exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, showing three framed abstract paintings hanging on a wall

Kandinsky at AGNSW

The exhibition of the Russian painter’s work at the Art Gallery of NSW provides a fascinating view of 20th-century art’s leap from representation to abstraction

In This Issue

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, ‘Portrait of Irène Cahen d’Anvers’ (La petite Irène), 1880

Breathless spaces: ‘The House of Fragile Things’

James McAuley’s examination of four great art-collecting families and the French anti-Semitism that brought their downfall

Image from ‘Shiva Baby’

Forebodings and a funeral: ‘Shiva Baby’

Emma Seligman’s funny but tense film is a triumph of writing and performance over spectacle

Image of Suzanne Ciani

Tip of the pops: ‘This Is Pop’ and ‘Song Exploder’

Two Netflix documentary series only manage to skim the surface of pop music history

Image of Scott Morrison at Kirribilli House, July 9, 2021

The coward’s pulpit

Scott Morrison is a leader who not only fails to accept responsibility but continually abandons his post


More in Arts & Letters

Emily Kam Kngwarray, Anmatyerr people, not titled [detail], 1981

A clear view: Emily Kam Kngwarray at the NGA

A major exhibition of the late Anmatyerr desert painter is welcome, but the influence of the rapacious art market on Aboriginal art is inescapable

Image of Agnieszka Pilat with robot dog, in front of painted wall

The rule of threes: NGV Triennial

The sprawling show’s exploration of technologies and pressing politics takes in artificial intelligence and deep-fake photojournalism

Black and white close-up photo of Sigrid Nunez

Animal form: Sigrid Nunez

The celebrated American author’s latest book, ‘The Vulnerables’, completes a loose trilogy of hybrid autobiographical and fictional novels

A public-housing brick three-storey building in Ascot Vale

A house provided: Preserving public housing

The architectural practice proving that refurbishing public housing can be less expensive and disruptive than demolition for new projects


More in Poetry

East Melbourne liturgy

A poem

Image of Les Murray

Les Murray’s magisterial ‘Collected Poems’

How to approach a 736-page collection by Australia’s greatest poet?

Detail of a painting of Barron Field

Barron Field and the myth of terra nullius

How a minor poet made a major historical error

Collingwood

A song cycle in 5 parts


Online latest

Installation view of the Kandinsky exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, showing three framed abstract paintings hanging on a wall

Kandinsky at AGNSW

The exhibition of the Russian painter’s work at the Art Gallery of NSW provides a fascinating view of 20th-century art’s leap from representation to abstraction

Image of Margret RoadKnight playing guitar and singing.

The unsung career of Margret RoadKnight

Little-known outside the Melbourne folk scene for decades, singer Margret RoadKnight’s 60 years of music-making is celebrated in a new compilation

A woman rides her bike past the Australian flag, the Indigenous flag and the flag of the Torres Strait Islands, Canberra, October 13, 2023. Image © Lukas Coch / AAP Images

Beyond the Voice referendum

Looking towards the next 65,000 years

View of the High Court of Australia. Image © Mick Tsikas / AAP Images

Guarding the power of the court in our democracy

The hidden forces agitating at highest levels to undermine judicial independence