A red beret
—Oblonsky’s image
He could have had an heiress but
he had to have this
a young Liz Taylor, national velvet
No opera as
unerring, estranged
She sets Tennyson’s poems to
the window
of the sticky post-Granville carriage
Green brightening the north-bound line
Whoop! Time’s woman of the future
It stinks in here
‘I’m very sorry but
would you mind/
I’m going out of my mind/
could you lend me your
paper?’
and she folds it unfinished
—Fairfax or News, what else was there back in the—?
I give words, they have words, someone shuts the door
Not in Shanghai or Bangkok or KL but the—
(Look, Shy-Di is on the horizon, with
that sweater like this view)
‘when you are finished?’
he migrates across the aisle
he sits and reads well he can’t read much English, but
French, Russian, oh!
not a line, you should see my valise
well how else do you learn? he sits and reads the whole
bloody thing
he’ll say anything, quick to a joke
nodding, laughing, it’s already won
page print on welder’s thumbs that hitched a ride all
the way a jungle of tea and
hungry sea
to this very girl
I’m going out of my mind, would you
do you ‘have anywhere to go?’
do you ‘know anybody there?’
if you ‘want’
do you ever imagine funny things?
how do you do?s
a young Elizabeth Taylor
and primo Bruce Lee have words
work it out on paper, the paper is
returned and sweating in her lady grip
conscious and lucid before the weight is removed