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Author: Marlene Marburg

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Notre Dame de Paris

    • Marlene Marburg, Grant Fraser
    • 16 December 2019
    3 Comments

    It rose in its tall verticals from the grace and welcome of the earth, / That swooned far, far below, / As canny masons hefted the limestone / Into vast beatitudes of grace; / Shipwrights inverted their minds to groom the oak, / So that it would soar, / As if a celtic monk had charmed a serpent into a holy phrase.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    If you vote for me

    • Bill Rush, Marlene Marburg, Maureen O'Brien, John Cranmer
    • 22 May 2017
    3 Comments

    Cars will be turned into flutes; sheep graze in public parks. Trams will be lined with books; prisons, wisteria-walled. Politicians will sing in choirs; accountants taught to tango. The old will have honour and cake and a licence for practical jokes. The middle-aged will lie on grass and watch the procession of clouds. The young will be loved and learn that to live is to be slowly born.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    No vacancy at the inn (or anywhere else in Australia)

    • Marlene Marburg
    • 05 December 2016
    5 Comments

    Please god of the fit and strong, forbid we should become 'the un-lucky country'. Help us to conjure the nerve to say, There is no room for you here in Australia. No vacancies. All full up. You will be turned away while you are trying to give your family respite from poverty or war. We have no room for you. We are using our space for shops. And Christmas trees.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Lazarus at our gate (Easter poems)

    • Bill Rush, Marlene Marburg, Maureen O'Brien, John Cranmer
    • 22 March 2016
    3 Comments

    To be fair, he wasn't a leaner, he was one of the lifters. Helped to keep the country running, so to speak, and speak he did often, on many topics. He was a leader, and felt justified when others, in the region, followed his lead. It wasn't that he didn't see Lazarus, but more that he saw him differently. Break the rules, help one starving beggar and before you know it there will be a flood of them on your door step. That's how he argued and plenty agreed. Judgement day was a long way off.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    My Christ is a raw object

    • Marlene Marburg
    • 31 March 2015
    5 Comments

    i am small and lowly at the feet of my Christ. my hair is sharp like needles on his skin. my tears wash the dirt stuck to his wounds.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Journey to the margins

    • Marlene Marburg and Grant Fraser
    • 23 July 2013
    2 Comments

    They follow a star, stirring light in their hearts more than the sky, to the margins, where even goats lose their footing. They make a silent journey, growing in hope that the child within and the Child without will recognise each other.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Liturgy translation prophecy

    • Marlene Marburg
    • 01 November 2011
    24 Comments

    Two blessings, one resurrected, one still in the tomb. We are not pre-Vatican. We think whole, body and soul ... We are not parrots in a pew trembling. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Ain't that what religion is for?

    • Marlene Marburg and Edith Speers
    • 14 September 2010
    13 Comments

    Come as you are, Marilyn Manson ... that's how I want you, Peter Kennedy ... Trust me again, Germaine Greer ... Don't run away, Catherine Deveney ... Nothing can change, Pope Benedict ... the love that I bear you, George Pell

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Today I desire less debris

    • Marlene Marburg
    • 16 February 2010

    It is harder to write poetry .. when you are rich ... People in Haiti are dead .. dying, grieving, .. starving and hunting for loved ones, .. and if they have the energy .. looting the few things left. .. Do I really believe .. that mine is yours, my friend?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Ash Wednesday 1983

    • Marlene Marburg and Grant Fraser
    • 17 February 2009
    2 Comments

    flame .. Might ignite the instant .. And go wildly on the palsy of the wind .. So that a shock of parrots thunders forth .. Spewing slipstreams of fire .. A vomitus of barbary sparks .. So that our lungs are cooped with ash

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