Published in Overland Issue 211 Winter 2013 · Uncategorized Autumn day John Leonard A bright day, but a cold day, Wind gusting thought and memory Across the continent, and away Across the world. My thoughts Are not my thoughts but given, Only, I may misspeak them. Sibelius’s Lemminkäinen dies In Tuonela, with snarling brass. Warplanes passing low, Scatter currawongs and magpies From the front-yard, squabbles Forgotten in panic flight. A hundred and sixty years since These valleys were taken – thoughts Of war on the wind, wars before And since. Perhaps we have only been Practising. The grass shivers: ‘Soon the real wars begin.’ John Leonard John Leonard is a Canberra-based poet and author most recently of Braided Lands. His website is jleonard.net. More by John Leonard › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 17 June 2026 · The university Financial power in the public university: the case of ANU Beck Pearse The deeper problem is institutional. Universities have elaborate mechanisms for scrutinising knowledge claims circulating between staff and students. But we have remarkably weak mechanisms for scrutinising the financial assumptions through which executive power is exercised. 1 15 June 202616 June 2026 · Reviews Transubstantiations: Toby Fitch’s Or Grace Roodenrys The final trick of Or is that in the end it stages something utterly universal: the search for a momentary recognition of ourselves in language, the maybe-hopeless pursuit of those “very exceptional circumstances” in which something half-truthful might be said, the unending attempt to build something that feels real with the limited resources one has. This is a very old, a very sacred enterprise. We might call it poetry.
