dransfield & poetry

this is a great portrait for a cover (although i have seen pictures where he looks a little less regal).

anyway lets have a poem / i care not for copyright if such a thing exists out here

Goliard

Going south

Sydney two hours behind is less than a memory.

I walked down the highway after a while

a truck stopped and by morning

Melbourne will be all around. Of that city

I’d save only the paintings and the Como House.

The suburbs could be dumped into the Yarra

as Melbourne’s garbage is. Next I’ll go

either to gloomy Launceston to visit

Hofmannsthal’s friend, my publisher,

Or west to wildflowers and the nickel hills.

The driver wonders what I’m writing

but with the superb manners of an Australian

merely asks, ‘Got enough light there, mate?’

We stop for beers at the Surveyor General,

night fills the wheelruts left by Cobb and Co,

the people in the bar have foreign voices.

Progress erodes tradition. When that’s gone

nothing is left but fashionable landmarks

marooned by emptiness, and carved into

a vandal’s library of huge intials.

Michael Dransfield

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