The Quick of It.(Poem)

 
THE QUICK OF IT 
(for Graham McDonald, National Folk Festival) 
 
   Rosellas in the cypress trees 
      are feeding upside down 
   while yellow trucks on demo sites 
      cart off the heart of town. 
   But on this stage two slender girls 
      each with a violin, 
   are fiddling their causerie, 
   trancing up their sorcery, 
   loosing the sonar tracery 
      that gives our atoms spin. 
 
      The slick of it, the kick of it, 
      they're raising up the quick of it, 
      there's lightning in their slender bones 
      when they lay out the trick of it. 
 
   Cameras whirr remotely as 
      they close with Saturn's moons, 
   while economic rationalists 
      are churning new tycoons. 
   But here are girls in jeans who toss 
      us curlicues of sound, 
   their eyes upon some inner thing, 
   some musical unzippering, 
   some chaos-theory patterning 
     ...