An appreciation of "Life-Cycle" by Bruce Dawe

This ten verse poem is a testament to a distinctly Australian invention, Aussie Rules football. Football is portrayed as a religion, is food and drink, is the life-cycle itself. Football nourishes the young and renews the old. Its mythology is life-sustaining. It brings "salvation", the punch-line of the poem.

The poet sprinkles the language of football liberally: "barracking...Carn ... streamers...scarfed ...Demons...Saints...ladder...final term...three-quarter-time...boundary fences". The argot of the grandstands is heard in Carn the Hawks.. Carn the Cats...Carn the Bombers." Dawe likens the initiation of a baby to the game when he is held aloft at his first game as spectator like young wrigglers swimming to the surface in the flood of light and sound in the roaring heaven ("empyrean"), of the MCG no doubt. This football has epic and heroic connotations.

Dawe's tone is ever so slightly mocking but gently so. He respects the strength of football's cultic life and the life-sustaining qualities it offers. He knows it is a life-giving religion offering an initiation, a journey, a wedding, a honeymoon and salvation. He does not deny its worth nor does he fully side with its rituals. He respects the fact that Australian football is a perpetually renewing mythology and although the dancers change, the dance goes on.

I enjoyed this poem and rate it a public statement of a fact. The power and passion of Victorian football in its homeland is wonderful to behold. Dawe records it all for posterity.

See also Noel Rowe Modern Australian Poets 1994, Ch. 3 A821.309 ROW

G. Smith: 26/8/97