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Thylazine: The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature                                                                                                                                          #3/thyla3j THE POETRY OF TONY BIRCH Selected by Coral Hull [Above] Photo of Tony Birch by photographer unknown, year unknown. "... and in the night/ should a heart drift back within this body/ 'let me forget' ..." I 'Relaxed and Comfortable' I Razor-wire nation I White Xmas I Ladies' Lounge I All Saints I Mont Park I Redemption Sonnet I Visiting I Michael I Scenes of domestic life I Pocket Garden I Colony of the Dead I Photograph of a godmother I Broken Teeth I Knowing I Daisy Bates I Fading Life I Exhibition Hotel I Traces I Assimilation Prayer I 'Relaxed and Comfortable' when the words to speak a past no longer fit a closed mouth and silence is the noteless hymn of comfort to ears of the deaf when the truth of us becomes encased in a shroud of suffocated memories we will drown in a soundless sea for we can be nothing but empty Razor-wire nation they ran a line of wire along the empty beaches where only yesterday our feet met the shore while love is an empty box we busily tend the cages gun-turret saviours in a razor-wire nation White Xmas we watch from the kitchen as the storm attacks the house gutters overflow with rain while an untended garden disappears beneath 'unseasonable elements' buried on the tea-table beneath the unopened gifts bon-bons and decorations rest his personals                  the birthday card                  dedicated but undelivered                  to a young daughter                  living at the end                  of a black strip of highway                  a receipt for a hocked guitar                  remaining unredeemed                  and his famous 'list of goals'                  ordered and re-ordered                  in his neat school-boy hand my uncle left us behind for a road heading north and a sunshine state luring hordes of no-hopers on deceptive bus trips he teased himself a dream to dance a life away in his bloodstream but the magic slipped by on each new adventure his homecoming came at a cost an invoiced ply-wood box courtesy of Economy Funeral Services on a candle-lit Christmas night a worn out family gathers singing wearied songs we look with fear for the strength of others anyone at this table who might hold the flood at bay Ladies' Lounge straddled across laminex chairs dragged from kitchens into the warm streets these women would drink shandies and smoke cork-tips while the Hit Parade drifted from the verandah we would rest along the bluestone gutter listening to our mothers singing Cilla Black they would do nails brush hair and touch each other in the comfort of an afternoon sun All Saints the blackened gown edged with a thin vein of crimson piping failed to scratch at my skin the cloth swept lightly across my thighs while passing between pews laying out the good word ignored by front-row regulars I eased my body onto the red velvet prayer-bench caressing the laced neck of my pure linen under-shirt quietly laughing as cloth bound books were fumbled through by uncomfortable relatives in hat, gloves, suit and ties dutifully attending baptisms and burials these strangers lacked timing not knowing whether to sit or kneel they left the church without the touch of holy water on their skin Mont Park On the tramway bus from Clifton Hill to Kingsbury Park my mother clutches a carton of Winfield and packet of Minties ignoring all the way traffic lights winking to her loneliness she holds me into her as we walk the pathways dissecting the neat lawns fringed with garden beds parading beautifully shaped roses standing in patterns of order in the emptiness of a hospital corridor a clean light bounces from chequer-board tiles to white walls and back again behind the heavy locks the shatter-proof glass men of letters sit behind eye-glasses and clipped beards - props occasionally stroked to simulate thinking - while attempting cures in here my father is subdued the waves of electricity gently ebb across his body on weekends he ambles erratically making a wayward line toward the EXIT we lay out the welcome mat for this former hard-man now pacified on pills and 60 cigarettes a day Redemption Sonnet descent begins in humid sheets of storm and a darkened city bathed in bloodied sin with a rush of air against my body warmed the river comes to greet my giving in a mouth awash in tepid, silted tea the caressing waters lap my wearied mind falling further from a life tormenting me to soothing dreams designed to treat me kind until my comfort slips to flooded chill with waters giving way to shards of ice a drowning could but redeem me still I could end it here not once, but twice if just a prayer can save a damaged soul I will gladly let this river take me whole Visiting (for Stephen Ward) your life is found at points along the river below the weight of the Cat-Walk where we hung for a moment in a fear between the underside of rusting girders bravely left behind and the anticipated touch of silted velvet waters waiting to greet our bodies fifty feet below or beneath the now famed Skipping Girl who flashed her nights away to an erratic neon rhythm lighting the banks infested with years of stolen car wrecks and young wet lovers until they dressed her lights to dance each evening for the peak-hour rush this river's edge is 'beautified' now its bridges are caged in safety while the abandoned sweat shops shine all glass and steel mock-condo Deep Rock Swimming Basin where we lay in the drifts of golden waving grass performing perfect smoke rings vanished from our youth here its memory lies below under an eight-lane freeway escorting commuters to suburban life walking here with my children sullenness is momentarily lifted by the graffiti-layered red-brick walls of the mill clinging to the lower side and the reassuring aroma of defiant wild fennel cut down but not beaten by lawn-mower 'gardeners' sitting at the falls and skipping stones again I can see us swimming here our summer nights here we carried the beauty of this river home with us in our hair and on our bodies Michael It is difficult to bring you back here before me so to conjure you up I go to the battered case beneath her bed I touch you lightly by sliding my hand across the cool silk of your yellow rocker shirt I see your baby face smiling innocently into the camera's eye about to shoot you I take the bread-board in my hands sent home from Pentridge and finger the deep scars and sometimes I walk along that laneway behind the Rainbow Hotel I look for you again while listening for the whistle of a bullet Scenes of domestic life we take the Communion host to our mouths young purified souls at Sunday mass then rummage the empty morning streets for answers searching sheets of shop-front glass peering into black depths of roadways shimmering with overnight rain and oiled mirages of lifted steam I search for myself in a rainbow reflection of bitumen an abstraction holding me awhile before we shuffle a pathway home wearing bruised feet that once skipped footpath cracks for good luck drifting hand-in-hand we slow but never enough to avoid her face looking back from the night before as she sponges a weeping wound and powders a tell-tale eye we return from prayers and wait in limbo she sits in morning's silence after sweeping away the mess patiently mending a broken vase- a wedding gift from her mother Pocket Garden the Moreland Road tomato-man soaks his humble patch and rolls a cigarette with thought before exercising his unkempt terrier along with his varicosed legs he ambles, while she a fading prima donna gaits her yesteryears leaning a bow leg into him as the railway gates lower the traffic it is a slow year for the fruit with a crop holding green under a weak teasing sun warming the plants on rare afternoons before shying away behind a screen of cloud or a sunset vanishing behind the brick-veneered west later in the evening the tomato-man rests himself on worn steps under stars with his sleeping love beside him a red streak of light and the erratic beat of bells bring the gates down on the day they touch without hurry and look to another day for the first red fruit of a slow season Colony of the Dead this your civic jewel city all columns & quarried stone carried on veins gold blood & hair bones scattered bodies met lead pages of bibles crucified to trees 500 tongues sounded skies foundation lies & lie in ruins city unravels marble balls skip fortunes run over numbers & numbers river forever snakes rain sometimes we are here in the deluge Photograph of a godmother a vibrant mane of hair paint-box splash of dress about to give way to shaving mirrors disinfected sheets in the same room (all vacant now) where she nursed three new born all spindly limbs and probing mouths of life we were asked to wait until she prepped for visitors a stick-limbed body floated under a shroud of drifting white anchoring white knuckles to cold chrome rails she saw that it was time three young daughters reflections of their mother's youth all wild hair and defiance knew nothing of this it would come to them in time Broken Teeth we live at no. 56 behind a tumbling front fence of splintered bones and a dirty mouth of broken teeth come inside, listen to the symphony of creaks a delta of cracks greet the former Victorian glory and well-swept rat-holes we have bad plumbing musk-scented bed-bugs their blood splotched bodies lie slammed into palms of playfully sadistic children out back where a dirt yard whips dust to a frenzy in heat congeals ground to dark clots in winter we have a pathway of patterns a gathering of lino discards quilting their way to the fence we have a brave perfumed rose determined fruit trees a dog crooning love songs to motley sparrows telling lies to each other where our yard meets the lane a single pregnant pumpkin sits squat, a saffron buddha in the fading opulence of a marble bath-tub behind the house of my childhood we have a rusting tin fence slipped through on weekends to streets where our feet always hit the ground running Knowing flying home east to west in the resting place between sleep and life I slip across to 36,000 feet of streaked cotton cloud and an awakening sun leaving its imprint in hues of pink deep amber and spirit fire in an after light I see you all eyes and skin aglow knowing where we will go Daisy Bates let Daisy pose under a Nullarbor sun in hat and laced gloves carrying a spinster's handbag the portrait of love caring stoic Mother Daisy but Daisy she hides them black black eyes behind the darkness of glass reflection Daisy don't like sunshine and Daisy don't like for those eyes to be seen secreted hidden behind black mirrors black holes carried into country Daisy - government spy woman hunting yella fella light-skins blue eyes Daisy counts them she catalogues for government men licking their lips in the city of churches but the women know women remember Daisy Bates - Kidnapper in the distance she comes piercing dark rings 'Daisy Bates, Daisy Bates Daisy Bates ...' they ochre the light-skins bury blue eyes under government issue smile like children when Daisy sneak by women remember Crazy Daisy remember those save those gone away Fading Life In 1940, my mother's father Austin Patrick Corcoran was discharged from the air force he was saved from duty by colour blindness his 'war effort' was fought at home on the assembly line working the night shift at General Motors Holden later, my grandfather built the 'all-Australian car' 1n the early summer of 1953 he came home one morning slipping quietly in the back-door of a sleeping house with his wife and 5 young children rested the night away an ordered man he dutifully folded hat and coat stripped to white underwear and escaped into a tiled bathroom snapping the lock behind him when the expected touch of his morning hand did not arrive my grandmother sought him out she found his body draped neatly across the tub no note was left and the coroner gave little away:                  well-built male                  age 47                  returned from work                  took sharpened razor                  cut throat                  bled to death it was left to a death certificate to pronounce his life 'extinct' my grandfather's heart weighed 12 ounces I have cupped his pre-war re-chromed 'best and fairest' trophy in my hands l have looked into the face of a hand-painted photograph sitting on my mother's mantle he is all polish and creases at attention in uniform waiting forever to be called up I have been with my grandmother through the cast-iron gates of Melbourne General we weed the plot change the murky waters and arrange fresh flowers my grandfather's body lies with his young son Michael John Anthony 'died tragically' 28 July, 1962 Exhibition Hotel I was sometimes afraid of selling headlines in the pubs the men there were too much like my father they pushed you and poured their lager breath all over you the women were different they sat in the heat all bare skin and bright floral dresses with rouged cheeks and fat red lips they would push a shilling piece into my pants pocket kiss me deeply on the lips and not bother to buy a paper Traces a temple of fingers dead-bare to the bone scratches a dead night while birds of all journeys from the north of the earth breathe the spent day down in the labyrinth of waterways awash with the abandoned and forgotten a pleasure gardens exile the fruit-bat all beauty in charcoal and chocolate suffers its death-house tango in a cask of plastic shreds rusting wire and weeds traces meet here at the midden of civilisation car batteries, spray-cans and stains on a mattress gather together and pray in the stagnation of tar and mache salvation arrives from the shadows in an arc and dancing sway of silver, rouge and deep blue when NUKE 2002 stakes a determined claim on this fractured drain Assimilation Prayer let the open hand of the Protector shed my body of uncertain skin cleanse me pure in the holy waters of the Bible - words & soap, words & soap cocoon me within starched white uniforms of armies of children saved by Empire and in the night should a heart drift back within this body 'let me forget' About the Poet Tony Birch Tony Birch is a writer, poet and historian who is currently teaching Creative Writing in the English Department at the University of Melbourne, Victoria. He publishes in the areas of poetry, fiction and literary non-fiction. He also writes critique on Australian culture, with a particular interest in the politics of race. His poetry and short fiction is widely published in journals and anthologies in Australia such as Aedon, Meanjin, Salt, Antithesis, Cultural Studies Review and Australian Historical Studies.    [Above] Photo of Tony Birch by photographer unknown, year unknown. I Next I Back I Exit I Thylazine No.3 (March, 2001)