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| A Jackeroo in Kensington | |
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These poems are available in print in John Tranter's Selected Poems, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1982, ISBN 0 86806 029 1.   Listen to the Poet Read  |
With a fistful of dollars in a knapsack and a brutal turn of phrase, colonials are crashing the party. Cette parade sauvage: on the skyline you can see Rupert Murdoch crawling over Fleet Street, a pigmy King Kong - did they shrug off an empire for this? Too right boss, that's what I want to hear, the glib, slangy lingo of the tango dancers steaming through the Heads in a sepia haze - it's the bottom of the world say the blond sophisticates. Hang on: wasn't 'King Kong' invented in America? The eyes that look into Australia are European eyes, Peter Porter said, but my friends' kids holidayed in Hollywood, and live in San Francisco. I'm middle-aged, and England made me, cobber, reading Maugham in the shower recess - though what about Malraux? and Lao Tzu? I'm going to be a Chinaman next time around, speaking perfect English or Creole, who can choose between the torrid charms of the one and the cool, pragmatic bite of the other? Can you say You fuckwit! in Italian? No way, but if you play Wagner loud enough you'll get rich quick in the Bloomsbury sense of the word - a humus of culture, a knack for sleeping in, these things adorn you like a froth and the National Gallery opens its doors for you, and you alone, at last. |
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