By Hugh McMillan
Thank you for your submission.
We have many submissions
and it is our policy to reply
to all submissions within six years.
Please do not get in touch before that time elapses.
In that time the yew in the garden will incrementally shut off more sun, in that time tall white flowers will grow, fall and rise again, the clockwork of nature will tick, clouds will move endlessly across different coloured skies. In that time children will be born so beautiful your eyes will ache to look upon them, and then they will be blown apart by bombs. More trees will turn to ash. Dictators will fill bank vaults. In that time, how many days will be spent drinking wine, craving sunshine and love, something like 2000. A lot of thought will go into that six years too, bunkers-full. Where does it all go, that useless thought? It could run ocean liners if we had the technology. Maybe we will, and bad consciences will fuel the painful journeys we have left.
Maybe after six years your poem
entitled ‘A Poet Reacts in an Age of Horror’
might be published in a small
Australian magazine.
