On eventually entering the library
(in faux-naïf)
in every ear
a black foam dot —
is the entire CBD
in mourning
or off to cocktails ?
scuffs,
lacquered toenails,
zimmy black suits.
rows of shiny packets
in the platform slot-machines
celebratory, glinting.
that crumpled white shirt, this
old tan bag, or black,
this imploded pair of thongs.
corporatism’s doom ?
everything seems stretched,
quite worn out
like tangled muscles, middle-aged.
my own insouciance a cover,
on the steep escalator
behind the woman-in-black
before me
and, followed,
pressed to walk
automatically
up
the tarnished moving stairs,
to imagine this
as ‘workout’ —
propelled, at the top,
towards a crowd
rushing the opposite way
past skateboards, beggars,
students, ning-nongs (everyone’s up
at 8 a.m.) —
hot chips bar,
through the ticket gate,
out
onto a cluster
of disfigured houses.
briskly, past the building
that holds
an as-yet-unsent letter
rejecting my application
for a brief change to routine,
well, no, really,
an application
for a JOLT — to think
on paper with Pasolini,
else-where and then —
no go —
so,
I’ll pass the building
daily, and — daily,
as usual —
think
‘how chronically unfashionable I am’
even after all the building’s staff
has relocated
to safer, better, brighter premises
or, arts-functionaries, I quote John Berger —
saying, to put it more baldly,
‘I don’t sell much.’
not somewhere between
success and failure,
I’m altogether
elsewhere
from the footpath
steamy glass fridges
in adjoining
takeaway milkbars
bring on
a (sudden) bout of
self-service indecision
(excessive choice
‘no iced tea’. . .
hopeless. . .)
in the newsagency
I check and play
ozlotto —
the proprietor
proffered affability
once I started to stop
for The Weekly Guardian
as well as the lottery,
on he goes, today,
— this summer humidity,
the weather bureau
predicts alternatives
to the actual weather
of any day — weird
weather, terrible weather,
strange. . .
inside the university campus
a man in a business suit
whose eyes seem smashed
with recent pain
passes dazedly —
he looks like
Yevgeny Yevtushenko looked years ago,
only smaller ,
or maybe Vosnesensky
( who I saw reading at the Con
but can’t remember physically)
and further up
on the horrible gouged phenomenon
of nineteen-sixties
grey concrete steps
an overweight security guard
in a boy’s boyish cap
& blue university uniform
is relishing
a meat pie
(hurrah)
this is
the last morning shift
of the century
for me,
and that’s what I say
to Agnes Wroblewski
when we cross paths
in the shady sandstone quad —
‘Kojooshko’ — Agnes who told me
that —
the correct pronunciation
of Mount Kosciusko
entering the library,
the greasy blackened edges
of the metal ceiling fans
whirring crazily
at my desk : under tall windows,
a dark blue storm approaching —
could lightning
be attracted to
the radiation fields
that fill this workroom ?
‘Doubt it !’
the wilful supervisor
stamps her foot.
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