Austral

by Paul McAuley

The rich inhabit a world that barely intersects ours, as hard to reach as the gold at the end of the rainbow’s span.

Isander has some dire skills, but she’s basically sitting around waiting to be married off.’ ‘It doesn’t sound very true to life. Everyone knows that women are stronger than men. And cleverer too.’

capitalism is unkillable because it kills every other system first.’

right of adverse possession.

The people who’d planted those regimented rows of spruce trees, built that house on an almost unaccessible cliff, harrowed and fertilised and planted those barley fields, constructed deer-proof fences around them, sprayed them with weedkiller – their version of civilisation was a constant struggle to impose order on a world that

worked otherwise. Our version, the ecopoets’ version, was as meandering as a river following the contours of the landscape. It was not about getting but about letting go. Surrendering not to God or the artificial constraints of society, but to nature. That was the most important lesson Mama taught me.