The Brunswick Street tram Just before dawn this morning I heard a long cheerful skreeeeeeeeekWhich maybe was a towhee or a jay or a lustish hawk over the houseBut I what I heard was the Brunswick tram, the 112, rollicking alongAnd squawking and screeching and harrumphing and groaning in theKey of C, it seemed to me. The tram runs through Melbourne roughlySouth to north. This is on the other side of this planet. The stars thereTold sharp stories I had never heard. I was far from home. SomehowThe 112 was avuncular and affable. I would get on at Gertrude StreetAnd ride a while and then ride back. I always felt better. It was a kindOf a brief neighborhood. People nodded. You learned to set your feetFor balance against the rolling of the vessel. People would read whileUnconsciously rocking back and forth. I do not think you ever forgetAnything that ever happened to or around you; we only lose the keys.But then years later a hawk screams away over the house and you areBoarding at Murray, and dozing right through Fitzroy, and finishing,Today, for once, for fun, just because, for no reason, at Dorcas Street.
I never met a nun yet wasn't in love before O, I had a sweetheart, sure I did, says a tiny stooped nunTo me this morning. Long tall handsome man he was too.Did you think I signed up to be a nun before I could fallIn love? No. I never met a nun yet wasn't in love before.It's good for you as a nun to have had your heart broken,Seems to me, or to break someone else's heart. It's a wayOf the world. Better to know it so you can be tender whenYou see it later. A lot of what we do is to listen, of course.But there's listening, and then there's listening when youKnow the feeling being poured out, when you felt that too,When you still feel it. I suppose I'll always love that man.How could I not? I think about him here and there, usuallyAfter some poor girl's cried on my shoulder. I'd thank himIf I could, for loving me back then when I needed so badlyTo be loved. That was a great gift to me then and now, yes.
What's the most amazing thingyou ever saw on a basketball court? Oh, there are an endless number of candidates for this,I say to the kid