i
You were one of those men whose spirit is untameable
Living with a vigour and tenacity
Outside the margins of convention
Knowing death so intimately
Life becomes a vast storehouse of joy
From the age of sixteen death had fallen in love with you
And through the subsequent war years followed you everywhere
Lavishing love on everyone she embraced
Wedding only those who acknowledged
The delicate disposition of her radiance
Many spurned her
Stumbling between grenade and machine gun fire
Blood and jungle mud oozing out of every laboured breath
Holding onto the thin red line of life
At such times she was patient
Understanding their reluctance
She did not fret or paw the air or stamp her feet
She waited on the edge of their dreams
Offering the languid roll of her body
Knowing in her heart what lay beyond the bat
ii
You were not the marrying type
You had no time for death or dying
Or eternal bridegrooms of the battlefield
Death had marked you but death had no hold over you
Death loved you but you did not love death
From Singapore to New Guinea
You witnessed unspeakable horrors
Suffered insufferable wounds
You fought without malice
Without rancour
In all those years you could not remember a single occasion
When death was absent
In your sleep in your dreams in your waking walking fighting crawling
Death breathed inside your lungs
It was all you could do to expel that aroma
Knowing no sooner had you done so
you would again inhale her fragrance
iii
In the fourth year of the war
You floated down-river slumped over a log
Your legs dangling useless in the currents
Your face a kaleidoscope of shrapnel
Huge divots of flesh ripped out of your body
Your rib cage splintered into a grotesque arabesque
Of marrowed pulp
When you were fished from the water by New Guinea natives
Who cradled you onto a litter
Carrying you for weeks up and down paths known only to them
You did not love death
Even though death had never loved you more fiercely
Or with such passion
You did not recede into delirium
Or succumb to the nightmare of that journey
To a cluster of huts on the edge of The Kokoda Trail
When you were strong enough to be carried
To a battalion of freshly stubbled soldiers
Your moist green eyes asked for no favours
Your soul wrapped like a tourniquet
Around what was left of your body
Diffused all sensations of pain
You craved nicotine and bananas
And seemed entirely composed of a shimmering blue light
Which subtly permeated those who treated you
Causing a sensation of heat to suffuse their lungs
Shriving their dreams upon the year you took to recover
From that first scorching kiss of death
iv
Finally
…
You lay on a slab of imported Italian marble
The Reverend Brian Beazley was in a state of shock
Having for so long predicted the time and cause of your death
The Reverend could not comprehend its arrival
You'd think after playing Lazarus
Five times on the operating table
You would have realised your soul lacked the necessary preparation
You'd think you would have called me to your bedside
And said Brian prepare me for the Kingdom
But you not you you just went and died
v
As you lay dying
You thought of all the other times
You had been in hospitals
Your life a series of graphs and charts
Measuring the rise and fall of body temperature
The state of your heart
The creeping invasion of muscular dystrophy
Collapsing muscle tissues nerve endings
It had begun in your left foot and spread ever upwards
At first you defied the paralysis
But as leg irons gave way to walking frames
To that first grey backed wheel-chair
You took up painting
And recording bush ballads
To the country and western twang
Of Cowboy Bobby Flowers, slide guitar
You thought of what Bobbie's father Herbie would say
Now that your own breath came in short spasmodic bursts
Now that the oxygen mask was forever clamped
To your yellow-grey lips
You pointed to Herbie in his eternal Anzac bath of oil
Cocooned in a tideless womb
Skin stripped from mustard gas
Erupting with violet dreams
Enduring the unendurable
You tell me how Herbie still grins up at the world
and winks those lidless eyes of liquid blue
There to remind us of who we are beneath our skin
vi
You thought of others who had been wheeled in
During your decade of resurrections
Eroded by the malady of The Burmese Railway
Changi
Tobruk
The curtain of blood from countless theatres of war
Descending upon their now aging bodies
Despite the intervening years
The marriages
The children
The variegated hue of their living
In intensive care you recount they all smelt the same perfume
They all hailed that same aroma of their youth
As a watchful bride re-appeared
More beautiful than ever
Many died in her embrace
Many spurned her
Stumbling between bed-pan and heart-machine
Shit and blood oozing between each laboured breath
Holding onto the thin red line of life
At such times she did not abandon her vigil
Understanding their reluctance
She sang her bridal song
Whoever seeks me finds me
Whoever finds me knows me
Whoever knows me loves me
Whoever loves me I love
Whomver I love I kill
vii
Fifteen days after your sixty fifth birthday
You had a prophetic dream
You told your wife you had seen a brilliant blue pearl of light
Inside the pearl sat a god sheathed head to toe
In the same shimmering blue
Who called for you to cross the river
Cross the river of dancing light
You told your eldest daughter
To eat well and beware of the man who promised everything
You told your youngest daughter
To eat moderately and beware of the man who promised nothing
You told your youngest son
To bury you with your gold watch and riding boots on
No matter what
You told your eldest son
You had wondered why your father Joe
Was covered with fine red dust
Until you realised you yourself was corroding from the inside
And the dust
Well the dust was nothing but the sweat mark of death
You told the nursing sister
Who had attended you twice weekly for fifteen years
To recite the bush poetry you had composed for her
Whenever she felt the inexorable ring of solitude
Tighten round her heart
You told the doctors
You would be discharging yourself first thing in the morning
You told The Reverend Brian Beazley his god was dead
You told your eldest brother
There was a boxing ring in heaven
Where all the world champions were still fighting to the bell
You told your youngest brother
To walk between the river and the moon
Because that was the only way his sorrow could be cleansed
You told Irene whose husband Doug rode shotgun with him
On the Gippsland pay wagon every second Thursday
You had donated two soft-drink bottles to the church
In recognition of the part they had played
In the saving of your soul
You told The War Veterans' Association
To auction your seventy-two paintings of lopsided racehorses
To the highest bidder
You told your favourite niece
Poppy would always love her
You told the nurses
You had run out of tobacco again
Would one of them duck down to the shop
And buy you a tin of Champion Ruby and a packet of Tally Ho
You told death
Since there were no secrets between you
To get on with the business at hand
You hadn't waited this long for nothing
And you didn't want to say goodbye to everyone
A second time around
