"The Ambition" by Robert Harris [Introduced by Thomas Moody]

Robert Harris died too young at the age of forty-two. During his lifetime he was never a major figure in Australian poetry, however, a recent publication of his selected poems, The Gang of One, has shone much deserved light on his oeuvre. In his review of the book in The Australian Poetry Review (found here), Martin Duwell writes that one of the rewards of reading through Harris's various collections is that one sees "how hard he had to work to make himself into a good poet."

 

I like the idea of the poet not arriving fully formed, but, like so many other things in life, being the result of experience, effort, patience. "The Ambition", anthologised by John Tranter and Philip Mead in The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry, seems to me a poem of great skill presented to us with a deceptive nonchalance. And I think its first line might be one of my favourites. Enjoy.

 

The Ambition

Mum, I'll be a fireman!
Did you know they gross around nineteen thousand,
work four days in nine,
quit, if they ever quit, in good faith

& moonlight driving meat trucks?
Aged people sometimes wander in 
to look at the fire station, 
saying they used to live here,

at this number. They look a long time 
at the appliances, till the head shaking
Chief rings the nursing home.

When you're old I'll be a fireman, Mum.
At green upper storey sills, waiting for fires,
I'll lean on my blue arm and look at the sulphurous city

 

Comments

[David Lehman]

What an unexpected sonnet -- deft, sutble, and with a winning first line. Thank you!