Gwen Harwood

Gwen Harwood lived in Tasmania for most of her life.  Like many women poets, she found it difficult get her work published and had a particular 'beef' with The Bulletin who she believed were prejudiced against her just because she was female.  She became embroiled in one of Australia's great literary hoaxes, sending 2 sonnets to The Bulletin under the pseudonym, Walter Lehmann.  The Bulletin editors were happy to publish sonnets by a man but didn't notice that the first letters of each line in the first sonnet spelled out 'SO LONG BULLETIN' and the second sonnet had a similar message but contained 'an obscene word'.  

Setting aside her problems with prejudice, her non-offensive poetry is excellent.

BARN OWL

Daybreak: the household slept.
I rose, blessed by the sun.
A horny fiend, I crept
out with my father's gun.
Let him dream of a child
obedient, angel-mind-

old no-sayer, robbed of power
by sleep. I knew my prize
who swooped home at this hour
with day-light riddled eyes
to his place on a high beam
in our old stables, to dream

light's useless time away.
I stood, holding my breath,
in urine-scented hay,
master of life and death,
a wisp-haired judge whose law
would punish beak and claw.

My first shot struck. He swayed,
ruined, beating his only
wing, as I watched, afraid
by the fallen gun, a lonely
child who believed death clean
and final, not this obscene

bundle of stuff that dropped,
and dribbled through the loose straw
tangling in bowels, and hopped
blindly closer. I saw
those eyes that did not see
mirror my cruelty

while the wrecked thing that could
not bear the light nor hide
hobbled in its own blood.
My father reached my side,
gave me the fallen gun.
'End what you have begun.'

I fired. The blank eyes shone
once into mine, and slept.
I leaned my head upon
my father's arm, and wept,
owl blind in early sun
for what I had begun.

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