Once upon a time in 2012 or 2013, when the poplars still stood remembering along the reflection pool at the Hyde Park Cenotaph in Sydney, Richard Tipping and I photographed and wrote about the scarifications into their bark. Mostly it was hearts and initials, sometimes a remembrance of some other kind - the day someone went to court. An arrival or departure. A cock and balls.
Each of the poplars stood like soldiers there. Silent and impassive while the people left their messages, dreams, hopes, jokes, and disasters on their flesh. (The trees have since been taken away and not replaced. Was it because they had become a place of messages? I hope not.)
We made an artists’ book called LOVE CUTS which had pictures of the scars with fragmentary text, and a short essay and poem each at the end. (There are still a very few available)
Here is my concluding poem.
Love Cuts
the poplars stand like soldiers
they once were their grey flesh
embodied ghosts of fathers sons who left
those handsome boys
those mothers' darling sons
those fathers' perfect images
they are quiet in the winter sun
their shadows fall
across the pool
their brave reflections mighty
with their arms raised up
in horror or orison
it's hard to tell
they have laid their bodies
open to the lovers walking past
those apparitions of their dreams
those walking hopes full
of grief and love absurd desire
the lovers stop and smooth their hands
along the length of that grey flesh and
being lovers feel the warmth and beauty
take their knives and cut
into the flesh a heart a name
the poplars take it in the names of love
at the monument the dark sad
warriors look to the ground caught in
their one act remembering
the lovers leave
their mark
the soldiers stay
