Unmanned | Page 5

packed?up & departed elsewhere. These two?old troupers stay on as the sweeper?plays his broom against the grain?backstage. They play out by agreement?the familiar angers to a suspension?of hostilities. A semi-believed in love?tried but haunted by its past. A?self-deceiving hope posturing the loss?of lives that went before of youth,?of partners had & names forgotten.?What holds at the seasons close?is passion flogged to life like a?single-piston engine, a sputtering?exchange of plenitude, the usual run?of days & dishes. The couple come home?to roost at last, tense & too aware.
2.
Squinting back down the telescoped?years as he had once through bombsights?to that recently freed city, after the?war & burnt out trams to how they?first met. He posted to Berlin and the?American sector, she from Baden Baden where?he had fallen for her. So agile & aerial,?a mermaid of the trapeze, star act of?an old fashioned circus. A picture framed in?time within the bleak cabaret of youth:?he uniform crisp & she in sequined tights?with her angels Wings of Desire?flared from bared shoulder-blades. They are?holding hands in celebration of the letter?M. Now, married into age & ageless?on an ancient Island, theirs is a love?old as childhood & wise as water. Solidly?based as the fist-backed rock of Uluru.
Brilliant Losers
On reading Geoff Cochranes Tin Nimbus
The gay psychologist quoting The Divine?Right of Kings and the lexicographer, his lifes?dream of the Great New Zealand Dictionary,
both entrenched alcoholics, both the originals?Dostoyevsky might have claimed, although?both stark losers by the worlds brute standards.
Yes, I was there too, that late Saturday night?after THE DUKE, riding the Kelburn cable-car up?under the shadowy, Gothic pile of Victoria
University, where furtive as hedgehogs, we found?a hand-hold to jemmy open an illegal window,?fossick the disused office for carton stacked upon
carton, each one packed with indexed filing?cards, meticulous references, NZ arcana, forgotten?dialects, fables rare as moose from Southland,
obscure derivations, etc., incalculable musings?of an idealist and dreamer (this he showed us) here?lay the singular industry of a reverential scholar,
abandoned yet thirty years on, The Oxford?Dictionary of New Zealand English first appeared,?penned by an academic of that selfsame city.
We are the last of the witnesses Geoff, like the?derelicts who took the sun sitting behind the Public?Library, or sheltered in Pigeon Park, days long
gone (along with THE DUKE and THE GRAND?HOTEL) a city newly syllabled, yet the light remains,?much the same milky white and pale as stone.
Hotel Diligencias
In Veracruz?dusk troubles with a scent of?gardenias after the last tramcar passes by,?and the rocking chairs begin their?small breeze-making on the balconied?terraces between the family photographs?and little statues.
The dancing couples revolve at an angle?in the great brewery mirrors marked:
Cerveza Moetezuma
before the globes lighting the plaza?die out at 9:30 pm sharp.
But this was?Villahermosa.
Lightning burns like mescal in
the throat of night.
The whisky priest skulks about?the mountain roads where you are headed, at?Chiapas or Las Casas, charging so many?pesos per baptism in the illegal night.
With or without him thrive the false?saints & miracles in these remote regions,?pure homage to superstition.
O comfort of Poverty! O lie of Pleasure!
You recalled the hot seaport,?your departure planned on the Ruiz Cano?that dangerous barge which took you?out over the Gulf of Mexico
away from the anger hidden in laughter,?from the pistilleros lounging by?the Presidencia.
You the too curious?gringo left behind you the coasting steamers?& pink squared plazas to forget the?taste of warm beer in dreary cantinas.
You headed for the high ground?of Tabasco & the country of ruined churches.?Back at the beginning
of those lawless?roads lie the dingy houses smearing out onto?silver sandhills.
Wardrobe Drinkers
is what they are in Austinmer.?Yuppies from the North Shore, $300,000?homes on the beach front, sending?the RSL broke & the greenies?blocking development for a few birds?up an estuary. Could be worse,?given the Japs on the Gold Coast?going off like mobile phones.?The miners & cottages are long gone &?so is full employment. In 1941?as a telegraph delivery boy I made?13 shillings 10 a week. Across?the Harbour Bridge to the North Shore?on a regulation red bike. Sunday?was the day for casualty messages,?the dead & wounded delivered?all over Sydney except Vine street,?Darlington, where Darcy the Crim lived?& the most dangerous place in town.?I came to Austinmer 30 years ago?before the Wardrobe Drinkers?in the days of the miners & cottages.?Take those grain & coal carriers?upwards of 250,000 tonnes with a 12?man crew, anchored stern to wind,?off Hill 60 out of Port Kembla?navigated by satellite direct to Japan.?You want the best view? Sublime Pt.?Lookout, right down the coast, the?Pacific ironed flat far as the eye can?see, a sky expanded metal-red nightly.
Girl. Gold. Boat
out of Port Moresby. The obese?Oxford villain tumbles overboard?speared by the fuzzy-wuzzies. Our?hero, Captain Singleton, finally
puts his shirt back on and tilts?his cap to the sunset. He places one?arm around his sweetheart and the?other at the helm. The sea falls into
suburbs of light, a topiary of?Islands could be mist. He is American?and at home in the world as he?moves forward on the celluloid tides.
He came out of sickness country?(sic)