Circular Quay

for david mitchell

Beside the choppy waters of Circular Quay
the years float back like Sydney Harbour ferries—
Narrabeen Collaroy Alexander Vagabond-Princess Charlotte Fishburn
I repeat their names like charms
as the tides take them away and bring them back again.
Once on New Year’s Eve with Pamela Wolfgramm
I caught the Manly ferry back to the city in a storm.
Last night I stood by a window
above streets of carbon and desire
beneath the moon’s yellow rectangle
mesmerised by boats moored in the black water of Elizabeth Bay.
Beside the choppy waters of Circular Quay
today I watch the ferris wheel across the tide at Lunar Park
begin to turn like a distant water wheel
or perhaps a long lost solar system.
Around my head seagulls create outfields of wide-spaced harmony
around my heart love poems curve in full flight across boundaries—
facing the sun’s red cricket ball I learn a poetic of line and length.
As the hour rings like a ship’s bell
beside the choppy waters of Circular Quay
as the blue-breasted mermaids sing
I think
     of
         David
              Mitchell.

page 186

Odysseus in Woolloomooloo

for nigel roberts

I no longer navigate by the stars
or the moon.
A piece of kelp that floats in the ocean
let others call it by some other
lost name.
I have no odyssey worth mentioning.
The stories I once told of monsters nobody these days
takes seriously.
To navigate the streets of a sandstone city
some place in a dream between chalk and crystal
I consult the epic poem of an innercity bus timetable.
When the sun comes up above Woolloomooloo
I sit every morning by the sea
and catch sprats
whose coulours before they have faded … to me
represent
     the heart’s
         freedom.

page 187

From the Hotel De Vere

for john pule

Lithe blond and beautiful

the girl flying up the concrete steps

between Potts Point and Woolloomooloo
as if on wings that were invisible

A goddess who may once have darted through
an olive grove in Tuscany)

leaving me to saunter sunstruck in Sydney.

Only later
from a green room at the De Vere

with a view across orange roof tiles
to Elizabeth Bay’s blue inlet

did I remember

sweat dark between her shoulderblades

how the motif on her TEE shirt

bore the legend

AIR ITALIA.