1
This is the death train, you can hear the death rattle
Promptly departs after 2 minute warning
You’re right, he says to his distant spouse
I will kill rather that surrender
I still seek an impersonal appearance
2
Across there the Annandale spire
I choke on a sushi roll
Seaweed
Summer Hill under grey cloud and ablaze with light
3 monstrous great cockatoos marching around on the grass, corner of Lambton Road
We seek a new name, we seek to escape the curse, the tyranny of the name
At school it only took my name to make me a German
A Nazi
And my red sox to make me a communist
Having said this Sydney will never exist
Never
3
There was love in those streets once
Love or something like it
Love is regret
Love is not nonchalance
Half the things we say, most of what we think makes no sense at all
I wear a Versace shirt and a Versace belt./ Still I am a tramp
One day I might wear them into the surf
There are three kookaburras sitting in a row
Painted
Beaks open in a mural
Their laugh is to others a death rattle
To Joe and the others
Joel calls his dog (CHECK)
4
Bob he calls. It’s not Bob McCarthy though Bob McCarthy played for Souths. One of the legends
His mate has a faded cap, a Rabbitohs cap
A house has been demolished. It makes all the neighbouring houses nervous, uncertain
A big tree spreads at the corner, a weeping fig
5
The crossign at Rhodes presents nothing colossal. There are 4 big cranes up on the ridge, a major building site
West Ryde
The roundabout is devoid of traffic
Denistone
I announce this to myself: Death to all people who talk on mobiles on public transport
‚Two hours before the interim draft survey‘
‚He thinks it’s too much for one person‘
I am yet to discover his line of business
‚10 000 tonne of sulphuric at Carrington. It could be two or three hours‘
Dangerous substances
‚Right-o then‘, he says, signing off
Power
Complacency and power
6
Epping
A longish wait
‚I’ll turn it off‘, he says. He must see me shaking my head in disapproval
My right eye is my stress eye, my eye if stress
This is an anglo line. There are no Chinese, no Indians, no blackfellas of any description
An Anglo line
Even the Irish seem in short supply
7
It’s a slow ascent, sandstone all the way
The trees are spindly, weedy, erratic
Wind catches the tops of the trees in occasional spasms
Toyota
Audi
A street lamp
It is now 2.45
A beeper sounds like a microwave beeper
If I had someone to talk to it woulod make no difference
The coughs are sickly, a ‚phone jangles: ‚How you goin‘ mate?‘
A single light in a single doorway
ETA: 3.27 pm
We are not yet to Hornsby
Vast apartment blocks. A tower boldly announcing Westfield
8
‚Please stand clear‘
Rain falls in splatters
A woman sighs
She is not yet dead
Rain falls
Thickens
We glide sedately
The hospital ward heads towards an unknown destination
We are set to arrive in half an hour
The carriage is hushed
Asquith
A single little shack that I like
A golf course with a lake
Maybe it’s flooding
Tonight the world cup qualifier: UZBEKHISTAN
My bad eyesight tells me there is no wind
The woman snores
Hushed
At any moment now we reach the highest point
Then the descent
The woman swnores, snorts
A cough from further back
And down
An upcoming train
Gorges to right and left
9
By accident the book opens at The Chase. Where we are, on the edge of Kuringai Chase
An old lady dies publicly, mouthing words of endearment to an ancient daughter
Death is contagious. Others start to cough.
The kangaroo has a spear in its side. It was here
Young men were initiated,
Tied to a burning tree. Today
Where are such cooling pools of water?
It is true, I have changed the possessive – from his to its
I do not know the poet’s sources, the burning tree
Cooking is always an initiation, but what indignity to become a soup onloy – and not even that
Not even a tartan
Not even a wildflower
Bob has died in his seat, the woman of sighs has died in heer seat, the woman of coughs continues to cough
A young obseervant man says ‚Sighed moans‘
Which he shifts to ‚Uttered moans‘
And giggles
The old tunnel is on your right. We continue to slide through daylight. We are a gorgeous sliding thing
10
The river is still far beneath us. The rock is damp with ferns. I’m waiting for someone to feed me a biscuit
The sign doesn’t say Brooklyn, it says ‚Hawkesbury River‘
We enter the first of the tunnels
We cross the wide waters
The tide is high
The tunnel is short
The oyster leases are set out in rows
Schumann’s rhenish would need to be calmer, more subdued
The curve of the rock
The line of the ridge
It’s a calmer mystery
A dead cow floats in the water
Its legs are standing upright
The house on the left knows its place, the house on the right is still an interloper
We try a joke: ‚Woy Woy Woy?‘ We don’t find an answer
11
And lovelier the light, the waters a deeper deeper green
The colour of ancient rockholes
john von sturmer may 2009 |
