Geoff Page: Two Poems

An Ordinary Melbourne Evening, Earlier That Year

 

A Carlton bank clerk, back from work,

is turning through the Argus,

his new wife, maidless, at the stove.

 

There’s been a drawn-out hug between them,

foreshadowing the bedroom later.

Neither is an expert but

 

they know about diplomacy

away up there in Europe

and all those foreign ministers

 

in tails and tie with sash and medals

pronouncing at the grand receptions

or busy with their secretaries

 

on trains between the capitals

while brushing up their French.

She’s seen the jigsaw done with Europe,

 

the lurch-by-lurch alliances

and grandiose ententes

collapsing into place.

 

There’s been a “war scare” once or twice;

he’s read about the “Dreadnoughts”.

They know about the skirmishes

 

an Empire blunders into:

that fracas with the “Boxers”,

that business with the Boers

 

when both were still too young to notice.

She knows that some of Harry’s friends

are joining the militia,

 

parading on the weekends.

He’s heard them brag about their weapons:

the ten-round-magazine Lee-Enfield;

 

the fire rate of a Maxim.

He’s passed on some of this to Jeanie

but not enough to start distress.

 

She has her sense of it, however—

waking to the milkman’s wheels

crunching on the asphalt,

 

imagining her tender Harry

kitted out with hat and rifle.

They know it is the “Modern Age”

 

with steam trains all around the state,

the tramways and the telegraph,

the horseless carriages with horn,

 

those stutterings of black-and-white

they’ve been to in a theatre, twice.

One day soon there will be children

 

who’ll see, in turn, those classroom maps

with all that pink to keep them safe.

George V, “fine looking man”,

 

they and all their friends agree,

“impressive in a uniform” …

as Jeanie says it’s time to eat

 

the simple meal that she’s prepared,

lamb chops, beans and mashed potato.

He gets up from the armchair

 

and puts aside the “THREAT OF WAR”.

Seated now, as if for grace,

they share instead a little joke,

 

some private innuendo,

and, smiling at it still,

are starting on their meat.

Geoff Page

 

 

Bombala

From the road you see it still,

vanishing in yellow grass,

the old Bombala line—

 

small embankments, minor cuttings,

low structures over creeks.

For thirty years these pale Merinos

 

have paid it no attention.

You stop the car, remembering

the signs they had at Central,

 

those wooden slats with destinations.

Bombala? Where was that exactly?

You contemplate the proud advances:

 

Cooma, 1889;

Nimmitabel in 1912

(in time for WWI recruits

 

laughing from receding windows);

Bombala, 1921.

You think too of the politicians

 

paunched and praising the Monaro,

those conscientious clerks all day

with maps and manifests,

 

the Chief Commissioner of Railways,

the calm men with theodolites

setting out directions,

 

the sweaty men with heavy arms

who tap the lines down tight. You see

the first train, rich with dignitaries

 

and self-congratulation,

the handshakes at the station,

the women standing back a bit

 

but welcoming the Future. You hear

the soot, the smoke, the hiss of steam,

the driver hooting at a crossing.

 

The rails are long-since pilfered but

an underlay of stones

and slump of timber bridges still

 

retain the sounds for those

who care to stop and listen.

It’s been just thirty years.

 

The villages are mainly

growing sleepier.

The bitumen’s a winner as

 

we should have always known.

The price of wool is less than half

of what it was in ’53.

 

Obliging trucks are quick to haul

direct from yards to abattoir.

You stand there in a gap of silence

 

between successive cars.

You’re looking for a word—say hubris—

but that is too dramatic for

 

these blonde and treeless landscapes,

these human traces, half-erased,

surfacing and sinking back

 

across a narrative of paddocks.

Geoff Page