AustLit

Epigraph: The period of the wildest weeping, the fiercest delusion, is over. The women rest their tired half-healed hearts; they are almost well... Everything will be splendid: the grandmother will not drink habitually. The fruit salad will bloom on the plate like a bouquet And the garden produce the blue-ribbon aquilegia. The cats will be glad; the fathers feel justified; the mothers relieved. The sons and husbands will no longer need to pay the bills. Childhoods will be put away, the obscene nightmare abated. Louise Bogan, ‘Evening in the Sanitarium