Tramps Like Us

                     Reading
Cavafy in the
new translation
I think, Isn’t this a bit
flat? & check the
Mavrogordato versions
I read when I was
21, 22—& liked—& see now
how crabbed they are—
with the word inversions,
the verb coming in, always,
at a weird place—
maybe where the Greek had it?—
 
On those grounds
the new seem a lot better,
& not much less ‘poetic’
(rich, decadent, in love with
the idea …  of ‘the gods’, the jewels,
the Pharoahs, Caesarions
Ptolemys & the rest—
the gold, the pagan ease or sensuality)
 
(rings on their fingers bells on their toes
head-dresses, mascara, flesh, muscle,
oiled & perfumed)
 
On the other hand, there are only
one or two I like—‘The Gods
Abandon Antony’, & a few of the
erotic ‘regrets-&-recaptured-
memory’ things.  Only a few of these,
because in bulk they seem foolish,
too little to justify poetry.
 
Maybe the Greek redeems them.
 
The three scenarios: a palace
or a tavern of late antiquity,
an alley of 1920s Alexandria;
& the re-enactment, the ficto-documentary
enlivening—of a foot-note from the past,
full of the pathos of its marginality,
its failure, its past-ness—or
a contemporary instance:
a more recently past tryst or
passion of the author’s—likewise
                         marginal,
fragile, gone.
 
There must be things about the
                                   poems
stack up against this: their
casual air & modern,
throwaway quality—
“scherzo”—is that it?
                                       I wish
he’d said more.
                            I look at Lou Reed—
the CD cover—
                                 young,
                                     beautiful
 
the record I bought when it came out,
 
& when I was young, too—better
looking than now.
                                 —Street Hassle—
 
Lou—alas, eheu, etcetera—has
just undergone surgery
(a kidney transplant?)
 
that will keep him alive—
                                            of necessity,
old, now, too.
                            “Sigh”?
 
                        Do I want to
revisit those times?  I was
living alone, had just moved
in, to a dumpy flat in
Redfern
                  a little stunned to be
single again—
 
then Sal moved in.  Before that tho
I had bought the Lou Reed record
 
to stay up to date
                                 with-it, hip, ‘modern’
 
about to turn 29
about to face
my first lean patch in poetry,
which turned out to be
“not so lean”
                             anyway
a new phase, iron
“entering the soul”—
as it has continued
to have done
ever since
                  I must now be
incredibly tough
—or like Dorothy’s Tin Man
 
(maudlin, brittle,
                                  marginal, fragile
‘given’ to looking back.)
 
I remember the Greek restaurant
I ate at once a week
—not far away—
 
not as good as those in the city
but I liked it
 
& John & Mary, the two guys who ran
the fruit shop—Lebanese—
 
‘Mary’ wore Scholl clogs
with white ankle socks
& bermuda shorts.

                                                       One night—buying a bottle, probably:
I certainly never drank there—
in the pub across the road
I met an excited guy who’d
just been in a fight & had
survived a knife thrust at him—
the blade deflected
by the small machine
he wore at his lower back:
it did service to or ‘for’
his kidney.  I wondered how,
since he seemed too young
& he said it was damaged
playing Rugby League, first
grade, he added.
And I knew his name.  He was
very pleased
that I remembered him.  Now,
fifteen years on, he was
a cheerful small-time crim.  He’d
have been famous
if he wasn’t part of a team
in which everybody was.
They’d been boringly invincible
for nearly a decade.  Billy Smith.
Centre, I think.