Read The Best Australian Poems 2011 Online
Authors: John Tranter
Tags: #The Best Australian Poems 2011, #Black Inc., #John Tranter, #9781921870453
It's a road you recognise from a car ad. What's it like to live here,
do you think, driving the same winding stretch every night,
waiting on set â that is, at home â for your thirty seconds
between snatches of
Law & Order
? And how do places
become redolent with stories, I wonder, what do they tell
about us?
Â
We're already back at the house, though, drinking coffee as
morning mist drifts past. We flip a coin to decide who's taking
the kids to soccer and who's going to the beach with our young,
loosely clothed friends. They remind me of evangelists, the way they
perform without being prompted, sipping coke, laughing, having a great
time. Later, while you get grass stains out of the whites and I
knock together a no-fuss dinner, all I can think about is fucking them,
like, really going at it, real rough, dirty sex.
Â
I need to go for a walk, step outside the frame,
marshal my resources. I think about when we bought our first house,
or got our first newspaper subscription (I can't remember which),
and it's apparent, even then, that things were already breaking
down. And so projecting forward, we can only wait to see
our hearts breaking, be recast, lose sight of what matters. There were no
simpler times, it turns out, no house by the beach. I don't recognise
anything now, much less tell stories or go driving, but
whatever happens, I look forward to looking back on this moment.
Now is the time for the crucial chandelier.
Choose an hour when no one else is there,
the heat intense, the couturiers gone away.
Lead me down a circuitous route
barely speaking, the better to anticipate.
Part the leathern doors and introduce me
to the obscurest church ever visited.
Teach me about its forked history,
how it was bombed and rebombed
and sulkily rebuilt.
Point out the seminal chandelier
with its thousand-year-old brass
flung into the Tiber in a vandal's pique.
Indicate each notch on the ruined pulpit,
the mincing lion and indignant unicorn.
Move ahead of me into the sacristy,
remarking on a particular cerement.
Reveal each nuance of your classic neck.
Outside
There's a dragon wind
Â
A man comes to give a quote
For the dead trees
He clears his throat
Â
I think he is going to go with Proust
âYour soul is a dark forest'
Or Gibran (popular
At weddings and funerals):
âIf you reveal your secrets to the wind
You should not blame the wind
For revealing them to the trees'
Â
Instead he tells us
Two thousand
Two hundred
Cut to the ground
He rides a Segway through the topiaried hedges
of the
Institut pour le Développement Harmonique
Next it's granite and a TV spin-off
while she squirms in the scullery, an emulsifier
and a theodolite on each hand
when in Preston she crossed a ditch of sobs
Â
She gathers the covenant to heart, before it lobs
her followers. Thought sledges
a wicket, but whether from glee or a stand
against corruption, who knows, a fit of pique
may as well summarise. She blogs: a death-defier
He pails water from a trough
Â
parting a fence's palings with finesse, a cough
whistles. The demonstration magnifies her probs
and immanence, an astrolabe warped like a tyre
falls across some scratched ledgers
that yearn to annotate and squeak
of her chlorophyll, but awfully fanned
Â
cards gloat and claim the land
was swamp. All bets are off
Return to the campfire: its clique
substitutes logs for chairs and sprigs for knobs
a saddle supporting her head edges
its cinders, i.e. the remains of a local flyer
Â
promoting the environment, as if what they require
could ever class a gluey saraband
over dinner of fried wedges
He resumes the inspection, with Prof.
at an elbow, advising how to maximise jobs
and measuring exactly where the fountains leak
Â
Whirr of helicopter off screen, over to Seek
.com. Either that or the National Choir
warbling probity, while an overseer dobs
her in. His wistful Peter Pan'd
check a rabbit fence will slough
the paddocks, while sunset's pink valve ceases pledges
Â
â all Greek to her, she dredges
up some prior ownership, he bobs
among the damned, all the usual stuff
Â
The trouble is they look so ordinary.
No tattoos no stubble and no concealed weapons
tucked into the belt
spoil the cool immaculate hang of their suits.
Â
These Brahmins of the caste
system we shouldn't call a market it sounds
like the butcher and fishmonger and smells
off. The suits rob us of millions without
Â
a single cop car screeching to a stop
(no melodrama, no bullet-proof vests).
The workers walk out into the too-real sun
and the directors pay themselves off
Â
surreal millions, their features unremarkable
as if money erases them, and indifference keeps
them young. Not public signs for us to consider
these faces no one can bring to mind.
One day, eventually, no escaping,
I give a speech â special guest
at the podium: stress. Gem
of an audience, a convention
of lapidarists. Hot, I broke open
the topic.
              What was the problem?
I'd rather have been lost among rocks,
fractures and folds, than found
formally dressed, among strangers.
Exposed. They sat like fossils.
I gripped the podium as if
on a cliff, troubled there
by vertigo. Spoke. It was something
of a lava flow. My only hope
to cling to the script, stay cool
in the face of stony ridicule.
Â
I'm flowing now, as if the video
won't leave me alone, the footage fresh
with my quaking. I go
along with the painted tribesmen, sad
to have their spirits stolen
by a rigid cameraman ⦠walked
away from surprise applause, pocketed
their gift: a polished trilobite.
Give it, at home in my warm palm
â wide of any seismic likelihood â
a reception better honed
only in the Cambrian explosion.
What is it he's after â that book he lent you,
that tie left behind in your wardrobe?
Does he think you'll change your mind?
What is it he's after, this close to nightfall
and no lights on in the house â
bruising his knuckles on your door,
and you not about to answer.
He'll get sick of it, wait and see.
I admire your easy dismissal, glad
I'm not bruising mine.
Â
You settle yourself back on me.
Hard, under the warmth of your skin,
to imagine being out in the cold,
standing on the other side of the door
with only your anger to hold.
for Peter Gizzi
Â
We sit to a bowl of miso ramen,
same as the night before, only this time
you're coming down with something
and need the chilli. Later we'll sketch
a brief history of
risk
, the word's
first appearance in a seventeenth-
century translation of the Lusiad,
the Portuguese retelling of Homer
with da Gama as Odysseus; how
mortality data drawn from the plagues
in England gave birth to actuarial
science, and Halley, of comet fame
crunched the numbers for the seeds
of life insurance â the epistemic
shift from the providential view
that meant you'd sooner sacrifice
a goat before a trip than trust in
numbers. These days we rationalise:
what's the probability of the plane
falling out of the sky? You're far
more likely to be struck by lightning.
Did I tell you my father died in a plane
crash?
you'll say, and I â mortified
by my hypothetical, nodding as you
explain your penchant for Xanax
on cross-Atlantic flights â think back
to this moment, ladling miso into
our mouths, steam rising in winter,
you explaining how you nursed
your dying mother this September
and muttering, half under your breath:
Dying is so expensive in America.
an giv my best
ta y'r missus
he ends his mobile
Â
trying to sell
something â
insurance
cars
ice cream
       it doesn't matter
Â
the world makes sense
to him
Â
flitting around
the c.b.d.
asking
       urging
              selling
Â
the smart ones
will tell you
Â
it's all just energy
Â
they won't tell you
about the intelligence
behind it
Â
that stolid
ruthless
poison.
With the slums of Paris as the norm
Of course Brisbane is exotic.
Imagine ripe mangos dropping on your roof
Or the insistent flight of flying-foxes
Every evening. Humidity
Could be midsummer anywhere
Particularly mid-continent. It will pass.
Growth â not human â is what matters.
Humans are peripheral here
Whereas they are all that matters in Paris.
Life might be something to use;
Here it does not count. Insects
Have as much claim: they are everywhere.
It is strange to feel so isolated.
Do I feel something is wrong? No.
Everything has its own proportion
But I will go back to what I think of as home
And in ten months I will think of mosquitoes
As the improbable cousins of humanity.
In bedrooms of Australia they are waking up and saying
What did I say and you know you should have stopped me and
My god did I say that and saying never that's the end of it no more
I'm giving up and swearing off it while their heads are full of saucepans
falling endlessly to floors made out of steel
Â
And they are wearing cast-iron turbans that are growing ever smaller
round their temples while the stereo bangs on: it's descant sackbuts,
Philip Glass and Chinese Air Force marching bands and whining voices
Is that mine? that try to surface through the note-sludge and the chord-swamp
saying that's the end I know don't try to talk to me it hurts
Â
The second last drink always is the one that does the damage what
possessed me to announce I love these cocktails I could drink them
all night long, or who says cask red wine's so rough let's have another
this is fun, it's Penny's big night out, it's Roger's last day with us
let's make sure we all remember while the café staff are laughing
looking on and counting money thinking ambulance or police
Â
They're waking up and cannot face the ugly thing that's in the mirrors
that will catch them with its mug the simulacrum of a plastic drink cup
crushed, its two small pissholes in the snow glued somewhere
next to burst capillaries' cadastral lines around what was a nose
and will those tom-toms never cease
Â
they're waking up if this can be called waking up instead of
resurrection from the dead and hearing noises coming out of furry caverns,
burred with algae, fungus, vacuum-cleaner sacks of dust and ashes
blurred with single malts and rotgut saying who's a clever boy
and who's a clever clogs and whimpering I know
I didn't mean it while massed choirs shout You did
Â
Across the bedrooms of the nation they are crying o my god and omigod
and omg and g almighty Christ on earth and on a bicycle what happened
where was I when that truck hit me and I thought among this blasphemy
my misery must end why are you with me if not helpmeet, friend
to guide me through the labyrinth of sin, disgrace and worse, insult
my colleagues and employer and I have to leave for work now
Â
They are speaking when they finally untie the Windsor knot that was
their tongue and making words out of the alphabet that's mixed up
saying Gertrude Steinways stone me, and the crows and all the raptors
Nevermore-wise as they hold their safety razors and attempt to shave
the hairs of dogs that stick out like whatever who remembers,
are those feet below me mine what face is this I have to look good
for the funeral somebody's, mine today
Â
They're lying sweltering in their odour hell what perished here last night
what am I doing in this bed that keeps on moving who's that body here
beside me, they are saying this is rough hold on I'm falling through the universe
again this bed is slipping into space what is that figure on the carpet,
that's no painting that's my husband that's my wife I think I'm married
Who are you where am I now how did we meet o god not you
Â
They're making whoopee in the barrel that is going over Bridal Falls,
Niagara, Wollomombi, Apsley Cataract, a dog a snake a wildcat
getting friendly as they tumble into mateyness and once again with feeling
to the top, here's Mister Sisyphus he's going up again
the warrior scuttling up the heights to that lone pine
that's every morning in the bedrooms of Australia