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Latecomers

University of Queensland Press

    The Unofficial History Pavilion


    Desires are already memories

    I have come to expect
    too much of the ocean.

    The tide is out again
    researching the month.

    Somewhere to the north
    lies a heart-shaped reef –

    here, a scarab mid-hegira
    from its burning island home

    clutches in death
    a charred Banksia leaf,

    bloated and afloat only because
    of its legs' grim marriage

    with the leaf's serrated edge.
    And now I recognise

    in its tough, unprisable grip,
    the grasp and clutch and grab

    and quip of everyone
    who's ever known
    what it means to not let
    go the only thing to come

    their way amid the salt scrim
    and vicious sprint of the wind.

    A union then, with leaves and other
    small commuters on the gust

    of some apparent consequence;
    for, what we seek to hold to

    when the world has
    loosed its hold on us

    may be what prevents us
    from never having been.

    So the wind discloses
    what we cannot relinquish,

    even in death, then carries us
    from our hearths to foreign beaches,

    there to hit upon what each we must,
    what it means to be alone, at last –

    even if only another island in the bay?
    Sadness comes in a wave:
    the ocean has no stake

    in this, betrays no particular desire,
    nor any to remember –

    perhaps begrudging each our tiny fire.


    A place for the rain

    here
    even the rapids are slow

    she crawls through the hollow log
    and finds time there

    time to handle the fabric of the mountain
    time to stitch the moss into couture

    there's a place for the rain
    behind her eyes –

    lightning quickens
    in the catchment of her lashes

    our breaths commingle, forming a microclimate
    no mosquito can fix upon

    then, life flashes across our path
    in a swift colourful spray

    a dragonfly alights upon her hair
    I find pause in the thought of her


    Odometer

    Counting the kilometers
    between us.

    Tonight you resemble a star:
    I see you as you were
    many years ago.

    Two travellers –
    how are they to be as one?

    Yet, how far we've come.


    Catch you later

    I walk towards my shadow
    stretched to the end of the street.

    The television sells knives.
    I hope to convince my siblings

    there exists an aeroplane of hope.
    They know only stabbed parachutes

    and the chortle of the saboteur.
    I thought I arrived late, argue this

    with my sister: Is this the face
    that launched a thousand shops?

    She matches me for cruelty:
    What's that, Shakespeare or something?

    Then imagine modern emergency medicos
    hacksawing through Marlowe's sternum

    to siphon off the excess blood.
    My sister's not in the mood

    for anachronisms, like yesterday
    & now. So the future it is, with its endless
    series of laser-sharpened machetes –
    & she, the softest insurgent,

    disappears into the night
    assuming the bright stars to be blunt.


    The partisan

    trains, always trains
    I can only suppose her death

    this frozen landscape
    villages filled with gallows

    you who sit opposite me
    in the same carriage:

    will you tear at my flesh
    when I am lying in the snow

    and you are ravenous?
    will your wild eyes forgive me

    for having been your comrade?


    Souvenir

    We arrived as the sun was sinking
    into the quicksand of the suburbs.


    It seemed everywhere we went
    we found a heart in the cement.


    We wrenched the bones of day
    with pairs of rusty pliers;

    they offered almost no resistance:
    we ground them down for pigment.

    Darkness wrapped each night like a
    retaining-wall made of recycled tyres.

    The moon was barely a souvenir:
    no one could vouch for her existence.


    New year's day 1239

    It would not do, riding my gaunt horse
    To re-enter the world's red dust.

    YUAN HAO-WEN (1190–1257)


    i.

    morning. the artlessness
    of half-open apricot blossoms.

    so too the image in the mirror changes.

    great chop of river
    refusing allegiance –

    an angry Yangtze
    darkens in the flood
    the waking flower.

    ii.

    welcome to
    the unofficial history pavilion.

    a dead garden.
    the mist, dynasties.

    images of geese in the distance
    heavy with a hundred smouldering cares.

    Skirmish Point


    Hamartia

    They thought our Wirraways were Zeros
    our Boomerangs Stuka divebombers
    for keeping low as accustomed
    during the simulated strafing exercises.
    The scaled-down model destroyers' fistfuls
    of Oerlikons pumped their percussive punch
    & whiz for a whole half hour before they
    heard the mayday. I was so deaf
    the blood came out like a handkerchief.
    Shirl was one of the nurses. I clambered
    up the scrambling net of circumstance, as it were,
    like I was boarding a mock ship-side.
    Everyone said the amphibious exercises at Toorbul
    were Churchill's handling of the Gallipoli situation –
    you might then say
    had it not been for dad's strife in Turkey,
    I may never have met my wife:
    the only pure thing to have entered my life.


    The master of small violences

    He wakes at ten, opens up a can of tinned peaches
    and hacks at the succulent halves with a fork taken
    from the dish-rack, the only clean utensil left
    after a week of neglecting the washing up.
    Pushing past split fly-screens in tatters after
    making the mistake of feeding next-door's cat,
    he flicks some of the syrup at a largish ant crawling
    along a frond and four varieties of flies swarm
    in like a squadron heeding the sticky reveille.
    Some of the syrup hits a spun leaf so that
    a spider worries for its sack, stumbles forth,
    forelegs raised to attack the assailant, mimicker
    of the elements, which it is unable to locate, aimless
    in defence. He finds himself inspired each time
    a Christmas beetle's wings close incorrectly.
    The cat bears gifts: chewed cockroaches beckon
    from its jaws. After lunch, ants scamper over crumbs,
    march toward a crack, drown, fall off the stainless
    splashback. Now the sun's warm paws reach in
    through the kitchen window, toying with each web
    as at a fraying hem. The sink fills with this predatory
    warmth: it is the day drowns them, he is blameless.


    Brennan park

    I chase the eclipse off the end of the jetty.
    The fishermen are all philosophers.
    Their nylon beards lean against the sky
    like lines of thought the ocean might relate to.
    The lorikeets, a truckload of chipped ceramic, tip
    into the honey-tide. Here, fate might be a rich nectar,
    but Pebble Beach Estate crumbs the mainland horizon,
    the type of place one might keep a hammock
    in its original plastic. Also, the postman arrives late –
    abandoned children snooze in his loading zones.
    This to introduce the ghosts of soldiers playing
    football in the park across the road to keep fit,
    honing the physical tactics of the parfit
    gentil knight that translate so easily into sport.
    To think in life they heard this chorus half
    an hour every evening, as I do now;
    then found out the hard way history distorts
    even the sounds of birds, turns them into scarves
    of fire, & the kid fishing into a p.o.w.


    Exchange at skirmish point

    That which is exchanged should be capable of
    comparison.

    ARISTOTLE, 'Nicomachean Ethics'


    Elbows raised up above the outgoing tide,
    the lead-line of the bait-net is tied around our ankles,
    the float-line bobs sedately across the top.
    We splash for garfish to sell at our local
    tackle-shop, where the news-crew comes
    to film the larger flathead for Coastwatch.

    Flinders put in for repairs to his starboard
    a few hundred yards off a sandbar we call Gilligan's;
    confirmed a quantity of pumice on the ebb,
    cut open a pine that smelt for all money of turpentine
    & stroked the white flowers of the tea-tree.

    He swapped the yarn belt that kept him decent
    for a fillet made of roo hair; was asked for his hat,
    the one with the cabbage tree filaments,
    in exchange for her dilly (a bag made of rushes
    containing a relative's skin, white clay, red paint,
    crude hair comb & a rag for absorbing honey).

    He took the dilly, but couldn't relinquish his hat,
    & so a spear sailed over the gunwale;
    the musket succeeded on the third attempt,
    hit one, the rest scattering like buckshot, or
    an excess of netted garfish, left chattering on the
    beach.


    First avenue

    spans the width of the island
    connecting the calm of the Passage
    to the tiny oceanside suburb, its handful of fish
    & chip shops, caravan park, pub and coastal blend
    of retirees, lifesavers and young families.

    Tonight the message
    the roadside wallum bears – despite my fervent wish
    that this two-way road stretch
    the x light years to Antares, smouldering above
    the horizon, not dissimilar to Mars –
    the message, then, gestured by the darkening thatch
    would be this: that there may be nothing to prove
    by cutting the lights, and driving to furthest stars,

    unable to keep the secret of this barbed capillary:
    that it was forged to shift heavy artillery.


    Void if removed

    for Nick Drake

    circus of light
    men fall from the sky

    airport blossom of suitcases
    which one do you hide in?

    you're back from the island
    where a tree grows
    up through a car
    abandoned during the war

    here the months have passed
    with each new batch
    of baby huntsmen.


    The metal detectors

    He sang of old coins buried beneath the dunes,
    to the north of the island, near the old artillery battery.
    For forty years he rowed for mullet north, and south,
    where the war-epic motion picture was shot recently.

    To the north of the island, near the old artillery battery
    we played hide and seek as kids in acres of bladey-grass.
    Where the war-epic motion picture was shot recently
    no one was allowed within a thousand metres.

    We played hide and seek as kids in acres of bladey-grass
    behind the northernmost bunker with the stop sign.
    No one was allowed within a thousand metres
  of the concrete dune, its famed middens of live shells.

    Behind the northernmost bunker with the stop sign,
    he buried the tin he put his youth in, a stone's throw
    from the concrete dune, hidden among the live shells.
    I am done trawling, he said. I feared unexploded ordinance.

    He buried the tin he put his youth in; the stones knew
    about his bushed heart, its unreliable iambs.
    I'm done trawling, he said. Then the unexplored co-ordinates,
    vast schools flashing before us like escapee payloads
    from his bushed heart, its unreliable iambs.
    For forty years he rowed for mullet north, and south.
    Vast schools flashed before us like escapee payloads
    while he sang of old coins, buried beneath the dunes.


    Salute the new prospero

    whatever you do don't inhale the weapons.
    while the antique holocaust breaks over
    the head of my tv the terracotta confucius
    and plastic robot figurine stand fast.
    no point flicking yellow pages
    for the broken Ariel, when I know
    her to be shackled in the cold
    bark of your steel trees, pining
    like napalm for children, weeping
    waves of radio tears for vile puddles now
    huddling on the horizon like stealth bombers.
    violet sky over a mosque in Babylon,
    I cannot know your fever,
    nor the dusty towel of your resolve.
    we've but assassins who scamper with cameras
    through cribs of crackshot snipers.
    the problem is this: I don't think I have
    quite the same relationship with death
    as you do. not yet anyway ...
    out in the backyard blackhawks flex in circles
    preparing for the president. beside the blanket
    two ants tussle over a maggot, become
    two-headed monster. nearby wasps
    with dismembered antennae
    attempt to tune in.


    Tarpaulin muster

    picking up the napkin you articulate my own response
    to the rushing noise from beyond the veranda:
    'end of the world!' though your father's common sense
    provides an alternative to the pregnant pause pricking
    the suspense: '... or someone dragging a tarp across the driveway'
    but like the distant sound of a thousand apache helicopters
    echoing off the walls of the garage less specific than the thud
    of darts or tracers we hear the bullseye pleading
    with history like a crater & on the other side
    of the world a woman is diagnosed with a rare disease
    after the bone dust of a suicide bomber leant
    into her own with all the grace of acupuncture.
    gather everything now & head for the basement that
    isn't even there gather what you need and bid farewell to
    summer's shed snakeskins and the kindling you brought
    in when it was wet for the earth is soon to be our shelter.
    the orchid that split the bark will not be seen
    by our children's children, who'll slurp from tins of beans
    out of a gash in the container & let the sauce spill
    down their chins like insecticide on young strawberries,
    their bright grins a mess with the stickiness of necessity.


    West end

    this gentle aphasia
    washes over us like fabric softener.
    there's excess
    then there's power
    autocycling its load
    spinning us semi-dry.
    the clothesline goes bung.
    one of the important strings
    has become unstrung
    & as the swing-set on the plateau
    projects arcs eastward
    a stray cat gorges on extra whiskettes.
    what are the best odds you can give me
    on the west winning back-to-back millennia?
    the boundary street festival promises
    to be the most memorable yet.


    National museum

    a currawong pecks at scraps
    but looks at me askance.


    my sunglasses slip
    onto my nose

    from off my apparently polemical
    gallery of hair – the bird becomes suspicious.

    across the lake
    parliament house peers through
    the crisp monocle of the capital.

    the tactical colours of a
    yacht club sway in figdark water
    darker than a tea-tree bay.

    the pupil as a basin
    & I'm sucked into the lens,

    sucked into the nest,
    sucked into the cataract of the civic.

    the wide eye glazes over,
    a thin, darkening film.


    Halfmast

    The one day of the year & I forget
    how to tie the knot that once kept up appearances,
    or at least kept them halfway up.

    The afternoon sun is prone the way a young chaplain
    sailing in a duck-boat up the Dardenelles,
    past ancient Troy, might have knelt before the lord.

    Out on the veranda sandflies react to a focus
    as if nan's knitting needles
    worked by themselves for a tea-cosy
    I might one day use as a beanie.

    There's John in the background:
    ... if yr lonely you c'n talk to me ...
    & though his altruism is a nice token
    something tells me he isn't really listening.

    Come in under the shade of this sports-betting ledge, John

    & suddenly I forget who it is I'm talking to.
    So an audience forgets, as soon as it's forgotten.
    Yr fly's undone, remarks the drunk
    at the Story Bridge Hotel.

    At least I can do that up.


    Settlement

    beyond the bay window
    a jumble of undulant breasts.

    gym bunnies stretch muscles
    I've never heard of, surfers fetch

    the swell as it comes and goes in sets
    like the gaudy fort da game of cigarettes.

    bombs on the front page.
    the tractor almost runs over us,

    our arse-prints leavening the serious
    sand, wanting a rake for tourism

    & the temporary tattoo
    of our national flag

    is taking days to disappear
    off the back of my hand.


    The stairs at epidaurus

    In the case of salt-water pools that meet the ocean
    the split between the two is often indistinct.

    I went to the store for tonic, came back with ginger ale –
    these small cracks pertain to diffusive futures, so take

    two steps for the height of every barricade to make it.
    Stroll with the ritual simplicity of a spiral minaret

    but in the case of a sixteen piece stoneware dinner set
    remember tiny portions leave a frame for our perspective.

    When designing bridges or boiling the jug for coffee, think
    De Chirico was not Dutch; neither was Mark Rothko.

    Note that natural light alone chastens the chapel of Ronchamp,
    that both the stark architecture of a Cistercian church

    and the spiral jetty know that they themselves are pointless,
    going nowhere in particular – though they stop to see us

    try to keep our word and quit our own impassive orbit.
    Ten feet. Feels good. Stand-by for touchdown on two.

    Satellite dishes want humble forms to show themselves
    less so, as if sensual figures were set against a measured

    grid, but the elemental arts corrode our robust patios
    and ruthlessness is just a silhouette, the perfect zig-zag

    of a bomber for example, or the basic vision of cutlery,
    quite the chase of Bach on the piano –

    the endless fugue of culture arrives like so many waves,
    an unlit set that tilts the balance, until, too deep

    for us to stand, it gathers like the clouds of swollen
    storms that threaten sullen swimmers with their

    silent lightning, a code, perhaps, deciphering itself
    to pure darkness.

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Excerpted from Latecomers by Jaya Savige. Copyright © 2005 Jaya Savige. Excerpted by permission of University of Queensland Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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