Well here I am, Tuesday 07:00 in St Vincent's padded chair,
one eye dilated one eye done and waiting for the call,
and when the suave young surgeon reappears
he's sorry but the microscope's burnt out,
they've called the rep and ops are off today:
come back on Monday, early.
A week till Xmas: we re-book trains, re-book our
pied-a-terre ~ which offers this online hook:
Win back your stay: Tell us your best memory of Sydney?
[ max. 200 words ]
I take the bait but cannot hope to win ~
my list's become a retrospective flood
an anthem ~ this
Port Jackson Fu 賦
❝ Description is my anchor. The sight of the sun is my security.❞ Anna Couani The Harbour Breathes
Anthem Variorum 賦 v.2
Pier Four no White Bay’s concrete plain flour job No.1 hold in yr own time get it in and go home Snails Bay dolphins timber job midday transfer launch sparkling— through the shadow and three bays east the Finger Wharf and look— down the gangway off the Mariposa come the Hari Krishna ~ not your songbook comrades Bellowing supervisors pannikin bosses called [long o] pannos The Hurricane Lantern he's not too bright his son The Wick The Mass Murderer Aub—three DUIs and two pedestrians Brown Sugar 1970 ~
Pier Four no White Bay’s concrete plain flour job No.1 hold in yr own time get it in and go home hatchman's newchum welcome E wouldnt know if you were up'im dumbstruck— port winch to the rescue It'd be true mate if it was you mate Snails Bay dolphins timber job midday transfer launch sparkling— through the shadow and three bays east the Finger Wharf and look— down the gangway off the Mariposa come the Hari Krishna ~ not your songbook comrades Bellowing supervisors pannikin bosses called [long o] pannos The Hurricane Lantern he's not too bright his son The Wick The Mass Murderer Aub—three DUIs and two pedestrians The Pantyhose 1970 ~ baling hook courtesy Australian National Maritime Museum
Granny The Sydney Morning Herald 1901 Henry Lawson Prose ii 125: ❝Even some London Conservative dailies come wonderfully refreshing to me after The Sydney Morning Herald ('Grannie').❞ A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms G. A. Wilkes 1978
❝I didn’t read the newspapers yesterday Sometimes I try When I sit in the hiring hall Waiting for my number to fall dead off the board Then I really read the newspapers It wouldn’t do to bring an anthology of Russian poetry Into the hiring hall of Local 6 Of the so-called “International” Longshoremen and Warehousemen’s Union So I read the San Francisco Chronicle Down to the quick of the want ads It is very quiet there Among the ambulance drivers and sellers of human hair And I imagine myself relocating in Southeast Asia As a transportation engineer No experience needed... Sidney Goldfarb 1965 from Poem to Andrei Voznesensky
Envoi ~ The dolphins still stand in line off Long Nose Point: the timber— archipelago meranti— all but logged out now; the freighters, dismembered on a beach in Gujarat. On George Street North, the gold-leaf public entrance to the Coroner’s Court is locked. The rear stone steps look down two flights to a square of dead blank ground... the Morgue. Departing souls buy UggBoots in the Courtroom proper, and next door at The Angel, they tuck in to Thai before they join the rattle and hum of wardrobes on little plastic wheels rolling up to board a mega-deck Pacific Odyssey. The barracks on the northern shore of Chowder Bay— now that the ministry for flogging off the foreshore's had its way— is yet another restaurant with a view. [History’s prescient: the barracks once had tea rooms stencilled on the roof, subterfuge to fool the Japanese.] And at this restaurant with its view across the channels to its twin at Watson's Bay, I understand they serve, with their cafecitos and espressos, a “Colonial Brown Sugar ~ The Taste of Yesterday”— neither coarse nor unrefined.
Envoi 二
❝ I grew up at Jung-yang;
I was still young when I left.
On and on,—forty years passed
Till again I stayed for the night at Jung-yang.
When I went away, I was only eleven or twelve;
This year I am turned fifty-six.
Yet thinking back to the times of my childish games,
Whole and undimmed, still they rise before me.
The old houses have all disappeared.
Down in the village none of my people are left.
It is not only that streets and buildings have changed;
But steep is level and level changed to steep!
Alone and unchanged, the waters of Ch'iu and Yu
Passionless,—flow in their old course. ❞
白居易 Po Chü-I T'ang dynasty
One Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems
translated by Arthur Waley
Gaston Bachelard
The Poetics of Space
'sealegs'
'bound for Broken Bay'