Coogee Beach
Languorous corporation of hazed consciousness,basking collective sprawledin undulant, pendulous embodiment,contoured in sand, or ambling to water's edge ...the limp pennant of bright towel marking each place.A sacrament of sorts, when blessed by these elements,baptised in brine, posing turns innocentand all is forgiven —though capering kids agitate the truceby throwing stuff, and tongues of foam hissenvious of this prone and pacific state:left with nothing, not even the clothes on our backs —all survivors from the ordeal of going in,stiff-kneed against the undertow,pummelled by a good natured surf —then dumped, and dragged into higher consciousnessoblivious to city streets and long dry roads;then to wade out in a dazeto hug the promised land,noses running salt water, sharing this houras no friends or strangers could —every body on Coogee Beach.
Messiah
The century dieswith too many deaths ...I survived, I think —though a refugeefrom a succession of grey Utopias,even if now hesitantly naturalisedin this present place.Still, you learn somethingfrom the crash-course of history;mostly irony — after beingill-prepared, late, and too often wrong.But now, what makes me hesitatebeyond clear borders of love and hate,is a gentle Jew.
Anthony
Poor old fellow,angular, pinched awkward man,taut and pink-faced,like a preserved quince;shrewd and sensitive despite his endless chatter:even now, the original orphanleft at every doorstep;Everyone hesitates to take him in,wincing at his eagerness,and protecting conversationfrom his fantastic interruptions,his perverse skill in missing every point.His need is to construct the worldin every instant from the start:recently he discovered the name of his mother,long dead, and found some brothers,and the strange world of blood relations ...Now a gush of communicationafter the long legal amnesia,he reports a big barbecueto celebrate the discoveryof belonging after all:the heat is off us now —unless, of course, you take himas a parable ...
Other owners
Often around the bend of the rivermostly in early morning and at evening,wandering amongst the flowering gums along the banks,surprising improbably bright parrots,I have a sense that this, all thisis still known, owned by invisible others —catching me midway between some feeble praise,and expatriate envy of those who knew by belonging ...as they dwelt in reverence's vast,tender accumulationof a whole world beyond me;As I stare untutored at flower, and tree,and at places where animals are supposed to be,I know they saw;and breathed what I glimpse,and danced what I clumsily survey.— I am where they were made to disappear;still animating the place, I think,still in cosmic dreaming ...and I mourning absenceor sensing presence,beyond the reach of