Andrew Burke

Remembering Robert O’Hara Burke

Because we're leaving the city

next week, my wife bought

a GPS. As the till

rang up our purchase, I thought

of Robert O'Hara Burke dying at

dried-up Cooper's Creek, unable to return

to what passed for Western Civilisation

on Terra Australis in 1860.

Now we read Instructions to Begin

at our pinewood kitchen table

instead of his 'Sorry' note

stuck in a tree at a camp

recently deserted. Now our bitumised route

is spelt out in measured female tones:

Enter round-about. Take third exit.

It would have been handy for Burke

back then when there were

no highways, no roadside diners.

***

Going Home

As I exit, I walk by my books in the uni

library. There is a shorter way but I

choose to hear my old words whispering

off the shelf 'in the swarm of human

speech', as Duncan said. On my way home,

in the safe bubble of my Japanese car,

I take the tunnel and in the humming

dark inexplicably think of

my White Russian friend naked on

his chopper, whooping loudly in his flight

across the desert, ejaculating in ecstasy

on his fuel tank. Those were the days,

my friend. Now, my tunnel breaks

into sunlight. The poet I visited today said,

Even the poems are chatty now, and he

was right: at the red traffic light

lyrical lines come to mind and I hurry to

write them down. The lights change

and my pen dries out. Diesel fumes invade

my thoughts as I drive so I turn the volume

up on ABC Jazz to drown out my

annoyance. That motel has been there

for decades. I remember the one-eyed

mother, with her baby in a cot, offering

me her love, or something masquerading

as that, in dusky afternoon light, a room

rented after fleeing her husband, the sound

of peak hour traffic slowing as it banked

for the suburbs. I'm off in a dream world

when the car behind me toots, and I'm

on the road again. Her name has gone

but her eye patch remains and the baby's

sweet snuffling. I change to a pop music

station. Get out of your own head, I

advise myself. It's not safe there, the

past is corrosive. At home I park

and leave the bubble of car and poem

with its own centrifugal force.

***

Dead Spit

I saw a man looking

the dead spit of you

today, Ralph, only

he was black, a

Noongar in Midland,

healthy and clean.

As he passed my car

he stumbled a bit

and for a moment

I saw his palm on

my side window.

I don't know if I

read too much into

that quick glimpse,

Ralph, but it seemed

his lifeline was un-

usually short -- maybe

I saw what I expected

to see. We do delude

ourselves, don't we.

He prob'ly never sang

at The Raffles in

the Sixties, although he

may have played didg'

outside Perth Train Station

late Saturday night with

his footy cap upturned

in front of him. Muso rates?

Not bloody likely, hey, Ralph.

No panties with a phone number

either — just bits of shrapnel

and ciggy butts, the burnt out

ends of smoky days.

***

***