Published in Overland Issue 201 Summer 2010 · Writing / Main Posts By the sea Philip Hammial I want it so the dead are blind. Blind the way Easter comfort washes a stick-dry corpse, passion as misplaced as that derailed train (Ann Arbor, MI, 1947) that ended up in a church, in a school room, in my parent’s bedroom, can’t remember which. What’s happening to my memory? My first dog’s name? The ladder joke? Blind as in the rage our boss manifests when he can’t find some fool to work for a dollar, his third world mindset hopelessly irreconcilable with our first. What about those boys who were playing cards on a tomb in a shit-infested seaside cemetery in Rabat (Morocco) in 1963, they probably would. Speaking of which: Valéry’s Le Cimetière marin in Sète that I visited in ’60, sitting for an hour or two under a pine tree wondering if I’d ever have the what-it-takes to write a cemetery by the sea poem. Probably not, at seventy-three I don’t like my chances. Which could be why I want it so that the dead are blind (& deaf as well, this poem as raucous as the Arabic of those boys in Rabat). Philip Hammial Philip Hammial has had twenty-eight poetry collections published. More by Philip Hammial › 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 28 March 20249 April 2024 · Main Posts Why we should value not only lived experience, but also lived expertise Sukhmani Khorana In the wake of this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, I want to extend the central idea of El Gibbs’s 2022 essay on 'lived expertise' and argue that in media accounts of racism, analytical expertise and lived experience ought to be valued together and even in the same body. 5 March 2024 · Main Posts Andrew Charlton’s school assignment Alex McKinnon Australia's Pivot to India exists for three reasons: so that when Andrew Charlton is interviewed on the radio or introduced on Q+A, his bio includes the phrase "he has written a book about Indian-Australian relations"; to fend off accusations that he is another Kristina Keneally engaging in electoral colonialism in western Sydney; and to help the Albanese government strengthen economic and military ties with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.