On Sydney's South-West Line

The RSL club fakes nightlife
with its few gaudy lights.
Beside the line
rows of red brick flats where
darkened cars slumber.
Stations at the end of the long journey
from Saigon or Bucharest or El Salvador.

I come from a country
where civilisation only exists
in cities and in tall buildings.
One day the small boys took over
and shot those over twenty-five,
then the tribes rallied
hoping to fall on the capital,
then the Russians arrived,
then the Americans poured money and weapons
into the hands of bandits
and the cities shook under rocket attacks
and the night sky blazed like a festival,
then the tribes clapped their hands
and everyone who could
left.

Smells in cupboards unleashing the past:
a rainy Sunday
couples coming out of the underground,
young man in military uniform
the girl distracted playing with his hand
kissing him as if he had already gone.
The woman turns the photos to the wall
she says it is unlucky to reveal someone's photo
tempting fate with images.

Arriving in Australia 6.30 a.m.
the city streets empty and quiet
as though we had come home from the world.
‘The people say she not live any more.’
The translation happens somewhere in the heart
when the mind has given up on the battle.

What could we do
our lives scattered like dice on the table
only to work all year
to pay off the cost of the airfare
the cost of the finder
the expense of the interest on the cost
in barbed-wire barracks
on the desert's white fringe.

Sydenham Station 6 a.m.
on the overhead bridge
in the damp chill of early morning
the crowd all migrants mostly women
rushing from platform to platform
having got up having eaten at five
mucho trabajo y poco dinero.

In five minutes the body is taken away
the injured are taken away
someone will clean the blood off the streets
and everything will be normal.
If you buy food for your family
in five days your month's salary is gone.
I don't think the fighting will ever stop
because there is no hadaf no but:
each group fighting, killing with no hadaf no but—
no aim or reason—
and the women and children
living in fear
living on death
living on the money from drugs
drugs for the world:
heroine and cocaine:
to fund the armies
to feed the children.

What to make of what happens
when people survive the eye of Auschwitz or Pol Pot
and settle down at the world's last doorstep
what to make of this land
where the only art that's alive
is electronic noise blasting the walls of pubs
where a poet finds South America
at the bottom of the tenth bottle of Actifed CC
that saddest of drugs.

I was five years old when my father was sent to the
re-education camp. My mother had to go out all day to
work and I was left alone in the house. I sat very frightened
on the floor. I didn't want people to see me. The
neighbours kept away from us because of their fear after
what happened to my father. After a few years I didn't want
to talk any more.

A river is strapped to my shoulders—
all its weight is there
every time I stretch out my hand
to turn the key in a door.

Below the line of trees
the bay lies sleek and restless.
Long outrigger canoes
jostle the shoreline—
here where the road dies
among coconut palms and thatched huts
a day like any other
for the americanos to order beer and crabs.
When the mountain shook the first time
my sister was in the change room.
You have to realise how proud we all were
when she got the job as receptionist
because a job after all
especially when you don't have relatives in the government.
She felt nervous, under pressure
with her co-workers waiting to catch her out.
She used to go into the change room a lot
because she could eat her food there
without being seen
and that's where she was
two days later
when they dug her out—
she was the only one to survive
because the air could reach her there
down a long tunnel.

The sun lies flat on the river:
whitewashed houses grip tightly about themselves.
Bluish grass grows down to the water;
drowsy heads of thistles dry in the heat.
Fear enters
from the giant screen
from the tiniest insect:
almost with the first words it came
blocking you from the things the words named.
My little boy calls the bats he sees on television ‘butterflies’.
Instinctively he fears them—
these sharp-edged black butterflies
fluttering in darkness.

We were waiting in a queue in the Palace of Communications
when all the lights went out—
a series of bombs could be heard
like little mushrooms
dropped on the floor of darkness
all over the city.
We said to each other:
it is really happening:
and we stood quite still
wondering what would be left.

Evening sky over Hue:
a couple in flame-coloured clothes
walking at sunset among tall trees,
quiet words in the ancestral garden,
the gentle pressure of hand on hand.

I didn't find you in the beachfront restaurant—
only your emptied bowl in the back kitchen.
I was racing towards a department store
hoping to see you in the mirrors.

At the central telephone exchange
the operator connected me with the wrong continent
then interrupted my dialling and said
‘The people say she not live any more.’

The woman turns the photos to the wall.

The small cries of love
that night in a paper-thin bungalow
under mosquito netting
the sounds of love from the room next door
the altered breathing the sighs
so brief and then silence
and moving over both of us
a force tugging at the waist
so that on the floor surrounded by sisters and brothers
nieces and aunties
in that narrow room of the barrio
the same dream settled on both of us
like a blockage of the throat and of the heart
and we woke and faced each other
our hands had become artisans of death
our lips beakers of abundant water
daylight was cries of chickens
the whine of a water pump
listening in the long hour before dawn
to the endless crying of a child
somewhere out in the darkness.

Outside Redfern station: 4.30 p.m.
the express is stalled in a wilderness of lines.
From the crowded carriage
the skyline of the city is brown with smog.
Each face lifts
towards an enormous clock
its black arms stuck in time.

In the metal scoop they are washing in brisk water
and what they don't want
is shaken off
and falls past my window.

They speak sparingly
and seem unhurried:
two grey birds
for whom my roof is home.