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Produced and published by the School of Historical & Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne
Published July 2008
Published July 2008
Partners
My favourite place of anarchy is St Paul's Cathedral. A hangover away from its sister church, the bottleshop of Young & Jackson's Hotel; my restful or fevered thoughts always give way to oblivion as soon as I collide, often quite accidentally, with her cooling front.
When I say the good or rare word 'anarchy', it is never in any violent sense, for I am a poet of peace. It's just that for some inexplicable reason I have always felt perfectly free to think, not just about Christ there, because I have always loved Christ, but that my thoughts - and what are we without them? - always feel invented for me, made up for me, because St Paul's is the only thing left in Melbourne that is perfectly free.
After one of my best and only friends was murdered for no reason by a few thrill-killers, it was to St Paul's that my runners found their way, and my heart, in my old maroon jumper, the one with hardly any cotton thread left in it, found peace in the front pew. For once there was no chair so hard for me that prohibited tranquillity. I love hard-chair-encouraging tears of grief; true grief is the soul of humour.
I collapsed down the back one day, this was in 1969, and I was terrified of going off to be a sudden soldier, the poet's exact opposite in spirit and body, the poet's turncoat; and I had been arguing violently with my father about Cambodia and warfare and how courage is a poem and a gunshot is the complete end of literature. In any case, I turned up of course at my old friend, St Paul's, true heart of my own particular city, that of Melbourne.
I was accelerating past the ninth wall of sorrow, bawling my brains out in confusion and bewilderment, and there is a grave difference between the two of those Hells, and all of a sudden a guy bowed down low over my shuddering body and he plucked me up, he buoyed me upward towards the excellent and holy and heavenly stained glass windows that face Young & Jackson's bottleshop and the Number Sixteen, the Moreland or University trams, and he said nothing but just clasped me fast.
An hour passed and no lecture did he give me. He was simply a moment of purest friendship, not some sermonising out-of-focus-self-made St of Melbourne. There are enough of those in universities, advertising and commerce, I think.
I have always drifted off to delicious sleep whenever I've had to put up with ridiculous sermons that have nothing to do whatsoever with the matters at hand. Then all the old Melbourne feelings float through to me in the back pew of that church and I can hear the minestrone being put on at Pellegrini's, even though it's in Bourke Street a few blocks away. I can hear all the trams bang up Swanston Street through my snores. I can hear Melbourne's poor in broken thongs and ridiculous op shop jeans and unwanted pink trousers, old bellbottom ones, that flare ridiculously and never hint of Carnaby Street. I can hear poor people squabbling over smokes and arguing over why they've still got the flu in the boring, suffocating, hot middle of another Melbourne summer. All the grit and toenail clippings and dying laughter of their sorrows floats through to me up the safe back pew where I pray for Melbourne.