Vivian Smith: Three Poems

A Note to Alvaro

You can be happy in Australia as long as you don’t go there.

—Alvaro de Campos, June 4, 1931

A poem is a clear defiant thing

and what you wrote in 1931

sounds funny from a naval engineer

who never saw the place where I was born.

You lacked a certain gravitas and calm

unlike your captain friend Pierre Loti.

Yours is a sad bewildered poem.

My home town was pretty much like yours,

a great port on the sea lanes of the world.

I remember the liners, the merchant ships, the yachts,

the wailing of the sirens, the swooping cries of gulls

and fishing boats at morning round the wharves,

the hidden melodies of sea and sky.

Imagined places might be best of all,

perhaps that is what you were saying.

Geography is destiny I’ve heard.

We do not choose the place where we are born.

Vivian Smith

Raglan Street, late 1960s

I saw them in the street that afternoon,

a happy family on holiday,

children beautiful and energetic,

parents basking in their newfound fame,

those smiling expats on their safe return.

And for a while their names were everywhere,

photos in the paper, voices on the air,

opinion pieces, interviews—the lot.

Then one morning I was walking past

their house—blue light whirring,

police car in the driveway—something wrong.

Years later and I slowly read

of all that happened in those shuttered rooms.

And yet the happiness I saw was real.

Vivian Smith

My Tasmania

My Tasmania is a roll of names,

Hobart, Derwent Valley, Bellerive,

Franklin, Geeveston, Dover, Huonville,

Daniels, Olsens, Nicholsons and Kings,

farmers, wharfies, grocers, working folk.

No other life has ever been like mine,

no other family the same.

My sacred mountains stand outlined in snow

and when I go you’ll find me walking near

the Sleeping Beauty or around the Springs,

in mellow orchard light at Strathblane,

or on a bush track heading for the coast

where the branch trembles as the bird flies off.

Vivian Smith