These apartments are all beautifully maintained.
One of them is in my husband’s name.
I saunter away along the top floor
& see the old woman
with grease baked onto her gas cooker.
I did know other people would be living here:
it stands to reason.
she gazes out at the brick wall, stubbornly.
There is a much better view from the other side
of the building.
I don’t remember these stairs. Pitched steeply,
winding back on themselves, leading nowhere
purposefully. Likely back stairs for servants
But there are no servants. Any more.
takes a shower in his jerry-built bathroom.
His haunches twitch. He soaps between his legs.
leave their door open? I don’t want to have to see into their rooms.
At last! The main staircase with that insolent, laconic curve.
& this friend of a friend
strides past me, three treads at a time – before I can find
breath to speak. Or lift a hand. He has come to live here:
found this house. He doesn’t seem to know I live here too.
We all live here. Well well. We’ll meet in the rose garden
adjacent to the fountain. Or he will reach for the knocker
to let it fall & boom inside the entrance hall as I approach
the porte-cochère.
He’ll turn and say – It’s you!
This is the staircase I have been looking for.
A cunning flight of stairs behind a secret door.
& here is my room after all. Four walls. But -
When I wake up I still believe in this house
my room: I plan to furnish it. & what to write.
—Jennifer Compton
____
from Parker & Quink (Ginninderra Press, 2004)
The Pursuit of Poetry
Once you have become a drug addict
you will never want to be anything else
Dransfield
It's late afternoon. It's always late afternoon.
Take what you will want. Walk out the door.
Walk towards the setting sun. Of course it means
turning away from the people you are leaving
with cold eyes, unamenable cold eyes.
Never say goodbye.
Now you have walked out of the house where everything
means too much. Now you are walking up the street until
you don't know where you are. Abandon what you thought
you wanted to take. You are becoming unclean forgetting
the passwords walking like dancing talking without meaning
back under the moon you never thought you'd see again speaking
in a voice you haven't heard in a long while
guessing lamp post guessing moon something
jerks twitches flutters something falls down -
there is the next front door right there.
It's very important to walk towards the setting sun.
And to never tell where you have been. What you have done.
—Jennifer Compton
____
from Blue published by Ginninderra Press (2000)
Don’t moan like second stage labour
in the back row. It doesn’t help
anyone. Soften your eyes, like a horse,
so you can see everything at once
like they do. Understand the source
from which all this verse springs.
Intuit it. As if you lived in a village.
One day they’ll die. In the meantime
they have a voice.
Their courage
as their arms swing and eyes roll
is their poem.
And the moment when they stall and
understand that on the richter scale
they are registering less than ten
is more moving than Fern Hill.
—Jennifer Compton
____
from Parker & Quink, (Ginninderra Press, 2004)
The trees, that do not belong to me, on the hill,
that does not belong to me. This is my premise.
The people in a house that grew like a mushroom.
But with shattering noise! Oh yes! Look across
at us as if we have always existed - just like this.
But indeed we have not. And will not. No.
When I call on my airy familiars, they come to me, more
insubstantial than they used to be, but still. They come.
With – lightsome tread. Through landscape. Sometimes
in the guise of an animal or bird. Sometimes … sometimes …
… exactly what is about this city that I cannot
quite – quite – quite – dislike?
They are looking at me! The people! As they pass!
I can’t grasp, even with exhaustive intuition, Asian
postures, ways of being. I can read the Australians,
some with an Asian cast of feature. Some not.
A grandmother – I can tell that much – a grandmother
trots past flat-footed, the baby jogging on her back
stealing the look of me. All saved to file, on her hard drive.
The woman in the beer garden in the black hat … scribbling …
… scribbling. As she steals me, so I steal her.
The man (with his bitter mouth) has gone. Up!
And left! Taken his chance, picked his time.
So I would not notice him going. Although
I notice him gone. He is gone out as far as I
can imagine to the place where he lives his life.
The place that intersects with this. I am bold today.
I am imagining lives. Lives! Three whiskeys down!
Writing a poem – as if it is allowed! – thrumming with
the courage to impose – and claim – what is always mine!
—Jennifer Compton
____
from Parker & Quink, (Ginninderra Press, 2004)