Poem
You turn on lights inside your head
and after drawing in that mist
soon decide how you must paint
Kogarah (suppress the first ‘a’ and it scans)
Named by the locals for the creek’s tall reeds
That look like an exotic dancer’s fans
When dead, was where I lived. Born to great deeds
A stable of silver
was our sacred skite.
It’s the poor in us
my father said; we are ill
with going without
even when we gain
a stable of silver.
‘Bring the guests this way, son.’
That’s Oreka from his Hotham
rout. That’s Ima Martian from
leading all the way.
Sliding the glass, the mirror skins
of trophies warped us round.
Decanters and their goblets of young
buckled the face of a bender-down.
Trays and teapots like models
for a meal, never used,
hardly touched except by my mother
when champagne washed the plum
from her mouth and improved her swearing.
China was not a country,
it was a cup and saucer place
in there at arm’s length from the world,
her arm’s length, turning over a dish
to show her Wedgwood or Doulton tattoos.
Advertisements asked ‘Which twin has the Toni?’
Our mothers were supposed to be non-plussed.
Dense paragraphs of technical baloney
Explained the close resemblance of the phoney
To the Expensive Perm. It worked on trust.
At night the eyes return
to chaopolitan Pigalle,
its bright explicit boulevards,
those jagged unlit backstreets,
women lean and watch.
The leaves of Tower Bridge are rigged to open
For any taxi I might chance to catch.
They say that when the ravens leave the Tower
One carnation broke off from its stem
while I was arranging the vases –
one white carnation
from a bunch of whites and reds: