Travelling Without Gods by Atherton Cassandra;

Author:Atherton, Cassandra;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing
Published: 2014-05-12T00:00:00+00:00

‘Good Friday Seder at Separation Creek’: A Reading

PHILIP HARVEY

Separation Creek is a pretty inlet with its own hamlet on the Great Ocean Road, halfway between Lorne and Apollo Bay. The exact reason for the name remains inconclusive; maybe it has something to do with the early timber industry, or something that was brought back from France in 1918. It is a weekender, which is why the family in this poem is down for Easter holidays. The title warns us that complexities and ironies abound, for the family plans to conduct that most ancient of Jewish familial obligations, the seder meal commemorating the Passover in Exodus, on the most holy day in the Christian calendar, Good Friday. Separation is not only the name of the creek, seemingly an innocent enough thing, it is also a theme of the poem.

The moon has a flat face,

yellow Moses peering over the chine

of our neighbourhood mountain. Growl,

goes the rough surf. Our backstage mopoke

may have guessed that we lack

shinbone and bitter herbs for the occasion

while nuggety Joshua, gleeful as ever,

nicks off to his bedroom in order to find

the tucked-away afikomen. His brother

is all tricked out in Liverpool strip,

as red as Karl Marx but much fitter.1

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