Budgerigars: Incident in Whitmore Square I

I saw three wild
budgerigars grazing
in Whitmore Square
today, a first for me,
and a delightful
sight it was too.
I wonder how many
flew hereabouts
before settlement,
and might fly and
settle here again if
we got our act
together.

Magpies: Incident in Whitmore Square II

As I came through
Whitmore Square, I
saw a shabby magpie
standing stock still,
looking up
into the branches
of an old fig tree,
and I wondered if
he had died
on the spot
and been stuffed
for decoration
as a public
art work.

But by the
time I had
written this
he had gone.

David Faber was born and raised in Burnie in Tasmania, and apart from some years in Italy’s Milan in the 1980s, has lived and worked in Adelaide since 1977. Speaking Italian, he has translated the Bob Dylan-Leonard Cohen-inspired Italian singer-songwriter and poet Francesco De Gregori. In 2008, He gained his PhD from Adelaide University’s School of Economics, Faculty of the Professions, with a thesis on the Italian-Australian anarchist and anti-fascist Francesco Giovanni Fantin. In 2016, Faber was awarded a History Council of South Australia Wakefield Companion to History Prize, also for work on Fantin, who was killed in 1942 in South Australia’s World War II Loveday Internment Camp. Faber has been published in various journals and anthologies, and is the author of ‘The Medical Model: A Verse Novel’.

Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.