Unmanned | Page 8

the?Waikatos billiard-table green paddocks.?I hailed Bob to the Great Barrier?Island & Orr to the Little Barrier,?but no answer came chasing after. I?sought you down the Harbour Heads &?Hauraki Gulf then all about the Waitemata.?I found a Thunderhead big as a?container-load of sorrows & nowhere hard?by were you toiling. Bob Orr I?called from Meola Reef to the outlandish?fishing-tackle cranes along the docks;?to Jellicoe wharf, Bledisloe wharf,?Marsden wharf, Captain Cook wharf to the?Admiralty Steps hoping I would find?you gazing out upon the glaucous slick of?trawlers, or catch you guiding a snubnosed?tug under the Western Viaduct.?Bob Orr I called down the unending?roadsteads to Motutapu & Rakino Islands,?back behind the wave screen at Okahu Bay?to Freemans and St Marys Bay. And as?I called into the Schooner Tavern &?sought the drear interior of the Wynyard?Tavern & the sailors talk told me?you had fitted and trimmed your craft?against every dire prediction to set sail?on that other sea, Bob, the one that?has no name & no horizon & is drowning you.
Dave Spencer
lived his life like barbed-wire?is what an old girlfriend said, man of?the river. But then, life finished you?off bit-by-bit though couldnt pluck out?your dingo-bright eyes. Lets face it,?you were pretty much an arse-hole?to those who knew you. Most of us just?bash the trees without seeing the kangaroos.?You saw living mostly for what it is,?a part-time job with bugger all security;?the occasional softness of a woman,?maybe, and of course grog by the bucketful.?What was it you saw at the last, Dave,?when passing through the ripped canvas of a?thunderstorm, lightning flashing down the?Hawkesbury, a good belt of rain after?
You Dont Remember Dying
least, thats what the Old Londoner?told me who didnt learn to relax till well?past fifty, seated alongside his two?mates: a Norwegian: Youre not the same?person now as you were ten years ago.?And the Irishman: I like the music its?the noise I cant stand. Each one,?orphaned & aphoristic, deep into his sixties.?NZ born and much younger, I offered:?Youre not the same person tomorrow as?you were today. And then, To your?arrival in Melbourne, they singly toasted.?(Great-grandfather, MacCormack, arrived?here in 1851 & 26 years later, in 1877, set?sail for Dunedin aboard the Ringarooma).?So our tale of the two cities unfolded:?Sydney is get what you can. Melbourne,?what have you got to offer & are we really?interested. The afternoon floated by?as did the trams with dry, asthmatic rush?in this mellow town of bungalows & brass.
Graham Clifford
After THE DUKE HOTELs demolition,?(opp. Perretts Corner) one last joke: one DB?beer bottle ringed by ten green cabbages
as roseate or wreath for an empty lot. Close by,?the mad bucketing fountain of Cuba Mall?played on. Meanwhile, at his Manners street
studio above the music shop, Graham?Clifford, renowned for his Figaro, ululated?profoundly through the scales. A window framed
trolley-bus poles that, tacking, flared bluely?along the wire. The maestros voice floated?over harbour & city, capital & far-flung country,
far from Covent Garden. A 1930s London?partied on amongst black & white photographs?plastered to the wall above a battered Steinway.
On Brooklyn hills toi toi waved war plumes?to the southerly gusts with unceasing applause.?Through a hundred, sunblown wintry afternoons
he coached opera singers, actors, newsreaders,?plucked notes off the yellow stained keys:?he guided, rolled golden vowels, before them.
Bruno Lawrence
Bruno, do you remember the Me and Gus stories,?way before Barry Crump got keen, when a cow cocky?was a bastard you met on gravelly roads? Recall?the nights playing community halls, and days making?a few records, only to break a few more? Ricky?Mays Jazz Combo, Max Merritt & The Meteors,
Quincy Conserve, plus, the all-stars-road-show?Blerta1, travelling Aotearoa, through khaki paddocks,?down thistle blown highways in that diesel bus t?seasonal rhythms you doubtless gathered, drummer?extraordinaire, on your final journeying off Cape?Reinga, the spirit freed to ride the rain you backed
the loner to the last, death the bottom line to stave?off cancer. Bruno, you did that thing. R & B, jazzman,?film star (didnt Jack Nicholson say get on over?to Hollywood?) but you preferred back blocks, sought?small towns, river shingle, the hollows of the land,?and a home around Waimarama in the Hawkes Bay.
A shifting romantic, hoon & hangman, a real joker?you played yourself sans bullshit in a heap of movies;?The Wild Man, Ute, you leapt from life to art?without a hitch; A Bridge To Nowhere, The Quiet?Earth, how you loved women, warmth by the bus load,?produced that classic my 12 inch, record of the blues.
1 Bruno Lawrences Electric Revelation and Travelling Apparition.
II
The Still Watches
I
Autumn tinsel floats gold on?July leaves and up goes the memory?flare. The carbon rod of winter?burns low and the dark is a mammoth?locked within ice. Watch the simultaneous?reels of the seasons spinning before?your eyes. A plane passes, and?upsets the late sun to a shadow-print?upon the wall. With barely a?movement we come from the bleaker months?to where the picture pans briefly,?dissolves upon the softer ores?of spring. Ah, but the Captains of?Industry are wheeling! A building boom?amongst the trees after the first?few casual blossoms had