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Author: Diane Fahey

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Dancer

    • Diane Fahey
    • 02 August 2021
    2 Comments

    I'm standing before the portrait of a woman with closed eyes, her hands delicately cupping, almost, her tilted head. In her face, in her composure, a flower-like serenity that speaks of care, reverence.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    No details known

    • Diane Fahey
    • 02 March 2021
    32 Comments

    Only Masaccio, the painter who first used light to sculpt the human form, portrayed this story. The disciple, Peter, walks through a Florentine street past three afflicted men.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Heart sparks

    • Diane Fahey
    • 09 March 2020
    3 Comments

    I remember, in the small hours, a spill of arcane patterns on the glass — heart-sparks treasuries of hallowed grief, of yet-to-be-lived hope, sequestered in the infinite.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The last year

    • Diane Fahey
    • 19 January 2016
    2 Comments

    They'd stopped by then, your half-filled crosswords with their fey surmises — inspired leaps from the backs of routine clues ... I glimpsed alcoves of dusty treasure: kris — 'Malayan dagger'; obi — 'a Japanese sash'; écus — 'old French coins'. You summoned bird names from the air: rhea, erne; had the secrets of ponds and streams at your fingertips: eft, orfe, elver ... 'open', 'small seeds'; six letters. You would have got that.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    In memory of Leo

    • Diane Fahey
    • 24 March 2015
    8 Comments

    'If I'm deported back to Sri Lanka, torture is certain because I'm a Tamil.' On the day I hear of Leo's death I pass a tall maple, its star-like leaves, blood-red and flame-red, irradiated. The Australian government refused the visas applied for by Leo's family so that they might attend his funeral. As three Tamil men at a microphone sing a long hymn in Tamil the Basilica fills with an undertow of sound.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Sitting in a room with my mother and father

    • Diane Fahey
    • 03 February 2015
    2 Comments

    The wind a cool shadow felt at my back: when the sun’s blaze slams into my chest, I am held between them as if both would claim me, pass through me. So grief, with its heart-heat, its pressuring shadows, lays claim, passes into and through us.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Birdwatcher's odyssey

    • Diane Fahey
    • 03 May 2011
    3 Comments

    those hypnotic swerves, a mark of dominion like all else: its height, its eight-foot span, its primeval patience. The eagle turned, an archer's bow; became a bold emblem that could impress the red seal on a document of war; rip out an eye.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Shoulder angels

    • Diane Fahey
    • 14 December 2010
    3 Comments

    The one on the left, wearing crimson tights, promises the world, probes with his pitchfork for hidden desires, sports a prehensile tail able to wrap around your mind ... his counterpart, in snowy alb, meditates on your right shoulder, sending into your soul's bloodstream a thirst for peace ...

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Power flowers

    • Diane Fahey
    • 10 August 2010
    3 Comments

    After I'd reached the Top .. why didn't they save me .. from Boardroom Rivals .. plotting to bring me down?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The birds I can't quite like

    • Diane Fahey
    • 25 August 2009
    4 Comments

    The birds I can't quite like, that symbolise .. cold self-intent, greed, the scalding primal .. writ small: drama queens and morsel-pirates .. at odds after the picnic — scraps about scraps.

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