MELBOURNE SET TO ERIC SATIE



Collins Street, 5:00pm is now not much
as John Brack painted it in ’55 -
the bland semi-gloss browns, po faces, old man hats
are gone. The trams remain
and Federation Square is a curious snowflake
refusing to melt.

O Melbourne
Leave me a little corner of Rococo
where demitasses clink in conspiracy
and the illumination is flattering
in the blueness of morning when my face
is still creased by trammelled hotel linen.

Sydney is a whore; Melbourne, a lady -
a splinter of Europe that has drifted south.
Around the broad shit-streak Yarra
the towers and domes rise like crescendos –
a museum of fantasy architecture
far from Cythera.
St Patrick’s neo-gothic spires stab at my life.

At sunrise and sunset, and piped in
through the night Full fiery the angels fell,
and flames were lapping at their shores
accompanied only by my addictions,

the city, and the trams.

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