The Corpse Flower Sketch

For John Berger

Sunset, climate-warmed and volcanic –

in the hot sky

a giggle and crake of fruit bats

flown south from development

print themselves in the old money trees

of spooked Park Terrace mansions –

the corpse flower is blooming tonight.

In the Botanic gardens queues

strobed with mobile phone flashes

shuffle under the captive palms

and Titan Arum releases its smell;

part dog bone, part teenage sweat shoe.

A velvety, visceral purple,

pleated curtain around a creamy phallic spike.

John Berger died today in outer Paris;

two more species disappeared somewhere in the world.

After sketching this flower

I will go home and read his Photocopies again,

his portraits of ingenious non-celebrity.

Which reminds me it was here, in this opera house

of tropical plants, I last saw my aunt alive.

She who had been a secretary for Menzies

kept her secrets,

but at lunch told us

when she worked for the Southern Cross Hotel

the manager got her to cut up the bed-sheets

the Beatles slept in

so he could sell little squares to the fans.

We came up this walkway

which goes over the lotus pond

and met a bird, a kingfisher flown from who knows where.

Stopping her there in her ninetieth year,

smiling at its magical quality.

Not a word, but a life, and no more than that.

The crowded forest grows inside now.

Mike Ladd