Waterloo at Night
When I look
down the street
in the quiet
of the night
towers stand
as if to meet
the fire-lites
in the sky
some windows
lit so they can
see others dark
and in the gloom
people sleeping
in their rooms
to gather momentum
for the day to come
– Adrian Spry
In Silence
As dead as soft gloved, lying sheltered by dry grass
a glider in a concrete gathering of guttering at
the corner of my street, neighbour I hadn’t known.
Landscape parched of trees, a grove I walked by
day and night sometimes, there had talked to
Saint Clare, overshadowed void a pitch of street
hers a little feast day. A little park in lampooning.
A king fisher’s daring flight, emerald, and crushed
to a body of feathers, paving of the technology park.
I said to those passing, see a social insect, as you
walk your dogs. I walk a terrace, lemon-scented
gums as mistral steps, an everlasting railway of day
and night, looking for faith, divesting of homeland.
A dead ringtail possum is at the foot of trees, birds
cluttering for morning light, sailors of a landscape
I had not known it there. I meet them as life and death?
Neighbours in place, to bring them a home, bury them,
a sanctuary of space, and with its sun rise, and I watch.
– Noel Jeffs
