Scenery emerges from the picture like a train
just emerged Jolimont-way from the
tunnel system, Melbourne, 1966 – in time
for jewels and binoculars hung from the head
of a mule – all roads to Port Phillip Bay.
Young mother pegging diapers on a line –
a black crow in its pulpit yawning the day’s
sermon to conscripts ganging the platforms –
flashing backyard suburban jingoisms.
We look back through the poem and see
only the wisteria creeping under the windows,
a trellis, a flyscreen door and dead lawn
a million miles from Saigon. The train rattles on
from station to station, parsing the signals,
numbing the arses of generations to come
without ever upsetting the status quo.
Arriving one day at the end of the road
like a detail conscientiously ignored until it
punches you in the eye – imagining some
real estate genius struggling to find metaphors
that fit the marketplace: southerly prospects,
ocean views, all modcons. Grey ships ply
the dun-coloured textbook waters and turn
into History. It’s cold and you shiver a little.
Out beyond the big picture the refinery lights
are coming on – the tide heaves towards its
Bethlehem. A hundred years and nothing
remotely imaginable, thinking why here and
not some other place, far away under monsoon –
Agent Orange sunsets making hell a scenery.
But the poem is only a way to dream without
having to suffer – and it dreams us too,
on the other side where time is forever
advancing like a threat. Night stabs a thorn
into the mind’s eye – we end where we began,
riding the line until the words stop. The
silent machines take us back out of the picture.
A train’s windows flash past like cinema:
Something groans. Something else gets born.