PAM BROWN - Some Poems of Sydney
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PAM BROWN - Some Poems of Sydney
If anyone
uses the
Russian doll
as a
simile
for
mystery
again,
I will
open the
hatch!
And that's
a promise!
In Galéries Lafayette
a blonde woman
is carried on a stretcher
past the perfume counters.
"LIFE AFTER DEATH"
Starts Today!
And tell me,
is there also
a beach called
Womanly?
Just then, someone said
exactly what I was thinking -
"the landscape here
is only marginally more interesting
than walking around
with a paper bag over your head" -
which was
what I had been thinking.
This time,
I am on my own.
I know this,
and yet, I notice
I am waiting
for something.
I'm looking after
the ancient black dog.
I conceal
the tiny sedatives
inside pieces
of red meat.
I sit in the bathroom
and try to remember
how I had
first learned
French pronunciation.
I cannot
understand time.
Living
in the present,
next week seems
a long way away.
Yesterday
I mispronounced
'Sans Frontières' -
without boundaries -
a text they use
these days.
I have lost
all sense
of chronology.
Everything
leaps about
in the labyrinth.
Possibly,
I never had
such a sense.
After
being thrown out
of the hospital,
years ago,
I left
one of my home towns
with a suitcase
full of clothes
and two records -
'Are You Experienced'
and
'Blonde On Blonde'.
These days,
young people
worry about
health fund coverage
and don't seem
to leave home
until
the very
last
moment.
Ah well,
it's far
too late
for me
because
I began
by reading
'The Garden Of Eros'
in mathematics lessons
twenty five
years ago.
And,
these days,
I'm not sorry.
Everything
I did, I did.
It's when
the first bus
goes down
Oxford Street
with
the daylight
just
pinching the edge,
the rim
of
the night,
the noise
begins.
Someone whistles,
passes
this window,
quietly
whistling.
It's these
working days
and
the restless
cars and scooters
at the lights.
In the middle
of the
Messiaen concert,
suddenly,
I wanted
to be
outside the hall,
to have
stumbled across
this building
full of music
while walking
in the
winter night.
At dusk,
before
the storm
broke,
the bats
flew in
above
the
gigantic
fig trees.
It was
remarkable.
I get up
from
a chair
to watch
the rain
outside
and
stub my toe
on the
table leg.
* Drinking
water
in a
suburb
called
'Zetland'.
Pam Brown