Alan Gould: Four Poems

Charlie Twirl

16/8/1945 George Street, Sydney

 

This is the Street of Hullaballoo

when poor link arms with the well-to-do,

two Diggers drunk beyond all help,

vast crowds a-sway like ocean kelp.

 

This is the Street of Broad Hooray.

Papers blizzard on its grey,

and folk go wigged in shredded files;

unprompted are their camera smiles.

 

My darlings, look, we have come through!

declare the crowds on Hullaballoo,

who conjure from their one ahoy

this genie now to seize their joy,

 

to skip and sway and doff his trilby,

pirouette his sideways smile,

and signal how all futures will be

made the lighter for his style.

 

This is no more than circumstance,

and this tall fellow’s brilliant dance

has just eight seconds in our view

as Newsreel trawls on Hullaballoo.

 

Yet catch the sob of pure release

from those for whom he’s centrepiece

so bravo and so fugitive

as he takes flight in ‘forty five,

 

this Mister Zeitgeist, Charlie Twirl—

whose name will be historical

for all there’s nothing in a name

when dance outdances personal claim

 

to touch the quick of what’s in view

along the tides of Hullaballoo,

where strangers link an arm and arm

to joy at others saved from harm

 

on isles of acrid ballyhoo

where wreckage is the homely view

till lifted now from that sheer pall

by this so debonair morale.

 

Our camera tremors on its scene

to steady light for where we’ve been,

this day of papers churned to snow

and crowds in archipelago,

 

to lift us with these ballet motions,

this blithest fuse for huge emotions

with commentary so bygone, yet

the footage of this pirouette

 

tracking the shots on Deep Hooray

where this Mad Hatter flaunts his sway,

lighting what’s meant when Hullaballoo

slips arm through arm with me and you.

 

 

 

Flambeau Flambeau!

to the Tune of “Nancy Whiskey”

 

Flambeau was the heart of ruby,

Flambeau warmed inside my head.

 

I was callow, I was show-off,

cosied Flambeau when she flowed,

let her take me from my schoolroom,

quick companion down my road.

 

Flambeau bronzed across the rooftops,

Flambeau lazy in my bed.

 

Lucas Windfall played his fiddle,

dancers ran before my eyes,

Flambeau led those carefree dancers,

gave to each their brief disguise.

 

Flambeau eased how I might parley,

Flambeau lit my shy Instead.

 

I went talking in the kitchens,

Roethke waltzed there with his dad,

Flambeau trailed her lovely shirt tail,

found for him his fatal bed.

 

Flambeau tremor through the neurone,

blue lacquer on a swimming pool.

 

I went walking with the whiskies,

Dylan Thomas sang his swag.

New York wowed such eloquence,

And found for him his body bag.

 

Flambeau, mischief-maker in

The provinces of insulin.

 

For forty years I’ve been a dancer,

learned the measures of the dance.

When Flambeau pools on my small dance floor,

still she casts my nonchalance.

 

Flambeau honeycombing moments,

lightning flash of my unsaid.

 

 

 

 

When Summer Rains

 

When summer rains come

breathing, they free a sunned

laundry-scent from our tarmac

as birch leaf and mulberry leaf

grow greenly quick with such

demure shiver like pre-sex ex-

hilaration.

When summer rainfall

grows to a saturating noise,

its fibres slantly astigmatise

my neighbour’s vast peppermint gum,

while torrent makes smoke along

the roof-cap of his egg-shell green

toolshed.

When summer downpours

cellophane my downhill view

there’s science immanent in glassy wires

grown pale and dense with application,

so precise is the drag of its descent

at five degrees aslant our power poles.

Yet somehow, like a counter-theme,

O look, our sun has sidled askance

to comment through cloud-rift,

that suns are understudies

for rain-puddle glitter.

When rains

must pelt the biscuit earth, they tweak

momentarily our tarmac driveway

with silver pepperpots while epic

over New South Wales each tree,

each veritable cell, now clicks

to fine hydraulic protocols.

When summer rains arrive

they take the template of terrain

in thrilling negative.

When summer rains

go sonar, a glittery brushwork

scythes and seethes. Canopies

curtsey to such soft percussion,

gutters warble, and a downpipe

drips with diamond fullstops.

 

Getting the French

 

Mister Shakeshaft with his eyebrows,

got the French into our fibres,

Dictée! Dictée! Point! Virgule!

in inkwell days of boarding school.

 

Mister Shakeshaft, mischief sniper,

shooting chalk at any gaper.

Gulp! Alors, vous conjugez?

Le professeur est trés fâché!

 

Mister S. in crowblack gown,

a-swirl with Gallic verb and noun,

was this a teacher or a nimbus

burling through our mental chambers?

 

His French is lodged, and his éclat

was a kindly, fierce voilà,

and such a gift that when he smiled,

it was first morning of the world.

 

Alan Gould