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From the archives

A Strange Road to Hell

Technology, culture and the march to World War One

Lax Americana

What happens if Donald Trump returns to the White House?

Gardens of Mourning

The vast, idealistic effort to bury World War One's fallen soldiers

 

Flora violates nourishing soil,

thrusts in roots that blunder deeper,

shove away pith to make path

until a shudder and collapse

or one rogue root extruding

from its flesh a solo blossom

bucks the fragile plan.

 

Instruments of darkness

toil in thick dirt.

Predators of root and bedrock

burrow underfoot.

Traveller, beware:

the patch of earth your boot imprinted

hovers on pockets of nil.

 

Peter Norman is the author of two collections of poetry, At the Gates of the Theme Park (Mansfield Press, 2010) and Water Damage (Mansfield Press, 2013), with a third forthcoming in 2015 from Icehouse. His first novel, Emberton, was published this year by Douglas and McIntyre.

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