Leon Trainor: Valparaíso

Valparaíso

for Thomas J. Lawlor, 1882–1960                                                                              

Valparaíso, tattered town;

tattooed too: graffiti adorn

every flank of your twisted streets;

a gaudy, multicoloured beast

clinging to vertiginous slopes

you make us giddy looking up

or down. It wasn’t civic pride

got you UNESCO-certified;

the city fathers saw a niche:

faded, nineteenth-century kitsch

that almost everybody loves;

so, while your galvanised-iron roofs

rattle in the storms of time,

improved the service industries

(replaced brothels with B&Bs),

let the tourists flood in. Sublime!

It wasn’t always so. Prime port

of its hemisphere, the town throve

while clippers slipped around the Horn

in droves and every ship would stop

and spend. In such a heady time

the rich splash out: portes-cochères

and onyx treads for the front stairs,

the poor scrounge pesos where they can.

1905, young Tom arrives

seeking fortune like any man,

puts the International Date

Line behind, toils as a clerk

for a steam ship line, survives

the 1906 earthquake,

trims the ledgers, keeps the ink wet

for whatever sails into port.

He finds he can’t suppress the thought

the trans-Pacific cable’s tick-

tacked messages seem to come

from a tantalising future,

always a day ahead of him.

In 1911 he packs

his bags and gets out before

the Panama Canal destroys

everything the town enjoys.

He returns to Wellington,

marries a girl who pined for him,

sails further west, always seeking

something new, briefly finds a berth

conducting flea-pit orchestras

—silent films are all the go—

in the Theatre Royal, Hay Street, Perth,

quits before The Jazz Singer wrecks

that dream (how does he always know

what will happen next?) He proclaims

the future to be a mug’s game,

learns at last it will be enough

to seize the now before it’s gone.

Photography transforms his life:

Stromlo, Australia’s stately homes,

grandchildren in their glorious

wild youth, anything that will spark

receptive minds. Thirty more years

capturing beauty for all time

with images that make you stare

until you lose yourself in them.

And we, lost in a rusting town,

come seeking something of Tom,

find him long gone but who’s to say

what isn’t here? The city’s spell

continues to disorient

space and time. Let us suspend

desire and inhabit a state

that’s neither in nor out of where

we think we are. Truth to tell,

we live on the brink; one day we’ll

topple back into what has been

so close your eyes and stand quite still.

The past is never far away.

Leon Trainor