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Morton Marcus: Well hello, this is Morton Marcus again and as you know The Poetry Show has gone many places, many countries, and had strange locations, but this may be the strangest: I am sitting in my car outside the Greyhound

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Station in San Jose, California, talking to Christopher Singh, who is an Australian poet who is visiting the United States interviewing for Australian Broadcasting Company different poets across the country. And he is himself, a very interesting

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poet. He was born in 1956 in Australia, he has practiced Indian philosophy and meditation for 15 years, and is also a student of music, has experimented with the settings of his work based on classical Indian Ragas. He's written

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fiction, radio drama, and literary criticism, and is a full-time freelance writer, co-editor of ‘’The Penguin Book of Christmas Poems.‘’ His first book of poetry is ‘’The House of Winter, Nazams and Ghazals" which has been called a book

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which is a "fresh fragrance of new innovation, and" says [unidentified] in the Independent Bombay, "it's historic. To my knowledge, no one has attempted something like this before." Christopher, why don't you tell us about yourself

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and your connection with India? Christopher Singh: I've had a connection with India since I was about 14; I began reading books about- about India. I suppose the nature of meditation was something that fascinated me

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from an early age, even though I don't come from a particularly religious family. I felt- I think, somewhat powerless as a child, and a way of gaining something back into my life was to move into the area of the mind because I found this- I

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thought this was a way I could express myself and find some inner source of power. By power, I'm not talking about ego but I'm talking about having a place in the universe and being conscious of- of it. Poetry fits into my life very close to- to

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Eastern philosophy and meditation. I found that I was- I was always writing as a child but from at the age of 18, I consciously began to practice the craft of writing. I studied journalism in Australia, but I found that I tended towards the

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artistic rather than the informational forms of writing, even though I do work on the fringes of journalism, doing literary kind of journalism. But poetry is really where I'm at, and what I do most, and enjoy most, and I feel the poetry is

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very close to meditation in its spirit and its way of harmonizing words is- is a- is a- something that one must do with- with writing. One must kind of find a harmony between languages as one must find harmony within oneself. So the

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poetry comes out of my meditational experience, but I also believe that there are- there is a lot that- of mysticism that is lost on the reader and I've always believed that one must have a firm footing in the craft and

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technique of writing, and that's why I've for my own writitng and studies I've tried to educate myself by all the critical standards that you know, professional writers must work to today.

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Morton Marcus: Sounds good. Now, when actually did- I mean you've been called maybe the first Australian Sikh. And when did actually- I don't know- would you call it Sikhism? Christopher Singh: Yeah.

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Morton Marcus: When did Sikhism sort of really emerge or appear as a way in which your spiritual life is going to go? Christopher Singh: Well, I think Sikhism itself is a religion that- it has a history of 500 years. It arose in India at a

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time of great conflict between Islam and- and Hinduism, and there is a whole range of experience there. For me, I found Sikhism about two years ago on a trip to India, after having been practicing meditation for at least 15

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years. I found that through contact with a particular man who heads a religious and agricultural community, his personal inspiration has been, you know, greatly, you know, has changed a lot of things very quickly in my life. And it seems

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to define many things, and Sikhism is a religion of meditation, and I also think Sikhism is the perfect religion for poets. In fact, our holy scriptures, now one book, a great book of poetry, a great poetry anthology, and we pay

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great reverence to that. We, in fact, come and bow our head in [unidentified] or holy place of worship, to a book of poetry. I mean, this is fantastic for poets, I think. Morton Marcus: How long did you spend in India? Especially after

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you know- Christopher Singh: I‘ve been- Yeah, I've been to India on that first occasion in ‘89. After many years of wanting to go to India, I finally got there.

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Morton Marcus: You stayed there long in India? Christopher Singh: At that time it was about three months. But this last time, I came back in March this year, I'd spent six months there, and I'm returning again in January.

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Morton Marcus: Did you? Where was this, in Bombay? Christopher Singh: This is in Delhi, the name of the community is called Gobind Sadan and it's a farm on the outskirts of Delhi. But we have five or six farms in different locations

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totaling about five or 6000 acres and all of this has taken place in the last 20 of years. It's a very successful farming enterprise. But its purpose is not just to make money, it's to kind of find a form of community living based on spiritual

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principles of the concept of religious focus through meditation, through labor, daily earnings, earning our own living, and sharing with the community. Those three pillars of Sikhism are what these communities are based on. And

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poetry fits in very well there, we have, in fact, some other resident poets in this community who are also farmers, and in India, poet is not a dirty word. You can be a poet and- and still do any kind of work and nobody makes any money from poetry of

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course in India. I'm not sure about- I think you make a bit more money from poetry in America, certainly more than we Morton Marcus: That is- will get lot of laughs from our listeners do in Australia.

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Christopher Singh: It's all relative, money's not really the issue anyway. Yeah. Morton Marcus: But the people who have the money keep telling us that.

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Christopher Singh: Yeah. Morton Marcus: Anyway, so you've- you've gone back and you've been there now, you choose to use these forms that are, you know, the classical Urdu forms and Farsi forms,

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forms actually that came out of Persia. Um, tell me why and what satisfaction that gives you, you've answered a little bit of this, but-. Christopher Singh: Okay. I began writing in fixed forms fairly

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consciously about three years ago, and I began writing, in fact, Pindaric odes, believe it or not, or evolving my sense of Pindaric ode and also sestinas, villanelles, and I just went through a period of that, and I began writing these ghazals

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quite unconsciously. I knew- I knew what ghazals were, but I didn't in fact know what the specific form was. And I just actually, spontaneously wrote about three or four of them using the typical kind of returning refrain at the end of

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every couplet. Morton Marcus: Are any of those three that you wrote in ‘’The House of Winter‘’? Christopher Singh: Yeah.

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Morton Marcus: Why dont‘t you just give us a sample? Christopher Singh: Sure. Morton Marcus: Okay. Christopher Singh: Okay.

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Morton Marcus: Can you give an [inaudible] to the listener what a ghazal is. Christopher Singh: Sure. So this is a- this is a ghazal. In fact, it's, I've taken a repeat or a refrain that was used by the

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great Urdu poet of Delhi, of the last century, Mirza Ghalib, and he's regarded as the Shakespeare of Urdu literature, let's say. And it'll become apparent I think, what- how this form rhyming in this- in this particular form takes place but

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the ghazal also is distinctive because each two line couplet is to discreet unique- united sort of unit in itself, you don't need to- you can stay with that- those two lines and like an epigram basically, yet they still are unified because of the

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common refrain that keeps coming back at the end of every second line and at the end of every couplet, and this is how it goes. Ghazal of walls and doors, the lunchtime crowds, a fool of

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walls and doors. Opening one, will I find more walls and doors? I open a book and your picture falls to the floor. I open a book and your picture falls to the floor. My Breathing stops, then walks through walls and doors. Let me always be

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lifting rocks in a treasure hunt as the child does not bound by walls and doors. Love's affairs open and shut like many books but will I ever tire of confronting walls and doors? Today you have pulled your face from thin air. Today, you have

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pulled your face from thin air. Yet still the air it's full of walls and doors. The door of the Mughal age was closed by Ghalib, but he heralded new poets, some walls, some doors. Why agonize all day over another ghazal? Why agonize all day over another

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ghazal when a ghazal is only made of walls and trap doors. A false wall springs up with every thought. Yet, there must be a way to live with walls and doors. When it's cold, I'm grateful for a generous fire. Just as you burned through all

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my walls and doors. All I ask is that you move in soon next door. All I ask is that you move in soon next door, so my doors and walls can adore your walls and doors. You get the idea?

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Morton Marcus: Yep. Christopher Singh: Yeah, I think it's pretty straightforward. In Urdu, and Farsi there is another form of rhyming that takes place, but I haven't attempted it in this book. In the later

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ghazal that I've written since then, I have attempted to do another kind of thing that's- it's very tricky to do in English because the Urdu and Farsi grammar is back to front compared to English, you have the verbs at the end of the line

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rather than midway between. So the form of rhyming is not so much in rhyming as internal rhyming. Morton Marcus: Great. I think we have time for another one or two. Are you going to say anything more about the poems

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because what I'm going to ask you to do is to read straight through for maybe another half hour beyond this interview. Christopher Singh: Okay, well, perhaps we can do one now, and then I'll read some more later.

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Morton Marcus: Okay. Sounds good. Christopher Singh: So, in fact, I'll sing this one because there is a tradition in India to sing poetry. It's not just something for recitation. Music is also very much a part of the ghazal

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tradition.So this is called: GHAZAL OF THE PASSING My heart decides to beat and hopes to fly. My heart decides to beat and hopes to fly because someone's breeze has just gone

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by. My street has been hard ground and always dry. My street has been hard ground and always dry yet a little bit of courage has helped me to get by. Will I ask him for you? Will I ask him for you? Or will I ask to die? And this dilemma my whole life

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has passed by. Morton Marcus: That's wonderful. I hope that you will sing some more in fact in the reading, and now, I would like to hear you give us a sample of poems that you would like to hear presented

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to America, would fly the skies over California. Christopher Singh: Will do that for you. Morton Marcus: Great. Christopher Singh: Description of a morning. Now, as I tiptoe

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out the door, here's a strange terrain I have never seen before. Golden lotion is rolling between tree tops like a palomino‘s mane, horse dancing on chrysanthemums, pouring its aura everywhere. Outside I hear the grass blades cracking, a

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powerbox buzzing up a pole while inside, there's a turning background, a constant hum, like a hydro dam. The deep bass is traveling endlessly between my ears. The sun, that touch up artist, fixes bronze into pine cones while the other auro

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simply pours it's fun, loving, luminous paint across the top of the Ford Falcon. Up the doorframe, over the guttering, a halo enveloping my house and now the bitumen drive is catching, sap is humming in my hand. I'm a bottlebrush, a burning bush

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bending down to carefully read the broadness of hydrangea leaf, such an illuminated manuscript, and how I love to see myself as snail dew on this bristle doormat. Blissfully I touch the house with fingers that can suddenly bless.

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This next poem is about- it's a humorous look at how one deals with relations with one's father. It's called: THE BARGAIN When your old man blows his top, you have to make a run for it

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out the back door shuttering shut, as if it too had rattled nerves, onto your bike, around the corner to hide out under whittled trees where the magpies and pee wees laugh down at you from above. There you play snake in the grass. Watch the cunning

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currawong pick up stones and bones and mud and with a blood curdling yell, flinging them hard across the canal. Then like a sniper, lift the stick, aim through the fork of a tree to pick your old man off for good. Hours later, the sun drops, your

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hair's tangled, your knees grass green, you'll have to face him back at home. Hopefully, he's cooled a bit, maybe you will see Disneyland. But another thing is more worrying. Desperately you bargain with God. "I'll give away my pocket knife. I'll do my

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homework after school. I won't forget to feed the dog. I'll eat my pumpkin every night. And yes, of course, I will not hit my baby sister for two whole weeks. If only God you will take the wrap, anything God, but not the strap."

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I've written a sequence of poems about my mother and my relationship with her, particularly when she remarried some years ago, and I suppose it's somewhat autobiographical. WEDDING MATCH

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Entering this chapel, I cough along with winter. I shudder for the wedding match. Mother simplified to second marriage blue chiffon, nervy, is coming down the aisle, self-consciousness after the blotchy facelift. I had no

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choice, not coming to hear the army padres serious joy in joining hands would have been desertion. Yet, I've always wanted you smiling like a girl to get back more than you have given. Today she is all innocence, all happiness. Try

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again, be a wife. I'm trying to steady against the pillar and swell up with hymns and not be sentimental with pipe organs that we use ventricular in the dead of winter. Now the cold ring must go on to find that familiar groove above the

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knuckle. When you precession out, will we ever be more than filial your greetings frostily exchanged. It's an old dependency thin as communion wafer. Yes, I'm still your son with asthma. You, the ward sister in bobby pinned, peaked

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cap, red cloak thrown over uniform, leaving at 8:30 for night duty, already tired out by the family who just let you scour quietly. But today, you are an officer's wife launched on a new career. You‘re so earnest about him, won't be

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climbing for any promotion and none of this you will ever hear, way too passive, my silent partner. We are cold air shuffling away down the marble steps. I congratulate a hand and kiss the scar tissue on your cheek. My Judas words creep up

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and hang themselves. This is a short poem, a portrait of a poet called: HINTERLAND POET He lives train distance from the city. He is the poet of stoical

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epiphany. This man who studied for the church left it behind for a view from a porch. He had lost heart with dry philosophy but found the furious solace called poetry. These days, he's full of rustic etiquette for backyard fruit, Easter cakes,

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old claret. While children play under the orange tree, he does his best to footnote Thomas Hardy. A somber ethics feeds his mysticism, and he jogs hard puffing in each poem. One must praise the artist in work jeans, with 200 poems doing the

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magazines, such industry, like bottling fruit in jars. His words are plain words with some stars. I have a bit of a connection with India as you've already heard. This is a poem I read when my mother returned from a

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military posting. Her husband, my stepfather, was the Australian military attaché to Pakistan for three years in the 1980s. And we re-met in a Chinese restaurant and we had breakfast there. And the poem is called:

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YUM CHA I was seeking resolution of a yum cha in the Peking Dragon. I had waited three long years for the military attaché and my mother. It was a 11 am exactly, fresh off the plane from

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Islamabad, reeking of good manners, colonial aftershave, my stepfather was one long traveler's tale of Pak insurgence and lazy servants. Mother had adapted well to camel races, cool drinks in the hill stations, the endless boozy

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dinner parties, those un-Australian ways with servants. Worldwise with an army wives politics in this fire breathing era of the dragon. She had the wit, the tact, and guile of the diplomat. Mother had traveled far from death camp

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suburbia. Now she ordered pork buns and steamboat duck. There was a new sharp way with waiters. I contemplated the carrot dragons with my chopsticks, all the intricate art of the East but it will be years before the only son

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surrendered his possessive mind, its sense of loss, accepting a true fire cleansing of the past, allowing the happy dragon into his life. Safe topic seemed better, but I sought only break through. "And do you like being a spy?" I said to her Colonel;

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he fled. She tried for a ceasefire. "Have a radish cake. You're still vegetarian?" What could I say to this foreigner? Once we were bonded, almost telepathic, now she was makeup and gold bangles. It would be years of itinerant lovers for

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me, like turned pages in my book of changes. But this hour was yum cha among strangers, as luncheon hordes invaded the Peking Dragon. This is called CHRISTMAS LETTER TO INDIA, It's a love poem.

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The last time before your trip, we wallowed like buffaloes for one hour. You flew off. I was left with only the memory of bodies wet as fish. Now, you seem like music traveling in the far raga of a cool hemisphere. I sweat you at night through my

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pores. On return will you wobble your head enigmatic as a rickshaw wallah? Will the scent of me be gone from your hair? I dream of pink silk from the Punjab. I dream of the Judo(?) collision of continents.

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In the last three or four years, I've made three or four trips to India, and we'll be returning there. And anybody who hasn't been to India, or has been to India, one thing that will assail your senses is the first time you get into an Indian city

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like Delhi will be the experience of traveling in a taxi and seeing everything from that point of view. This is called TAXI RIDE Hello, Punjab Shoe Company. Hello, Niroula Real Estate.

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Hello, tea stalls, sweet shops, street hawkers. Hello, Kamala, Sari, Kendra. Hello, auto rickshaws. Hello, bicycles, mothers with babies begging at traffic lights. Hello, thumbless lepers on pushcarts, monkey man hanging from buses. Hello,

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ambling cow, elephant lumbering to work, boy on buffalo cart, farmers in tractor trailers smoking hookah. Hello, dogs with visible ribs outside of Abdallah's meat shop. Hello Hindu, hello Muslim, hello Sikh in saffron turban. Hello, Seto

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with swinging penis. Hello, Sanyasi and Swami orange. Hello, Jain monks surgically masked, savior of animal and insect. Hello, Harijan women lifting the pickaxe for the nation. Good morning black and yellow taxi. Good morning Lord Shiva, holy

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picture meditating on the dashboard. Good morning Mr. Ashton, cunning driver. Good morning greedy meter. Hello, you bitumen river of India and taxi rides of rebirths and taxi rides of rebirths going the long way around.

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India is a fascinating place, to say the least, and the literary life of India is also fascinating. I went to several poetry readings there on my last trip. And this poem is a kind of description of going to one and it also investigates the kind of

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cultural clashes with India- within India, and because India is a culture of many languages and many cultures itself. It's called DIRECTIONS TO A BOMBAY POETRY [unidentified]

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So, you desire to hear the real poetry, then take a three wheeler from station, 10 minutes only just a few rupees. A function is being held in the suburbs, a college not well known but tonight the poet's will be the real thing. Unlike

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us English speaking types, those fellows say we cannot dream in our mother tongue, but I assure you that is all jealousy. Inside auditorium when curtain lifts sitting on stage ready to recite will be Marathi, Gujarati, and Hindi all stars invited to

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silver jubilee celebration of the Malay parley School of Economics. Compare [unidentified] Farooq at center table will provide episode couplets, stage will be adorned with red and white garlands and poets pinned with ribbon

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rosettas. The maracas will be strident and satirical, those fillers draw crowds I must admit, the Gujaratis will sing their heartfelt gospels, you must watch especially for your Gindred Chandra, hair long as our wondering Sadhu, his poems,

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red roses nodding in the breeze of mystic anachronism, and yes, Dr. Shay [unidentified] that's squeeky chap will read from ‘Orchard of Nightingales‘ his verse play nomin- nominated last year only by the Saitera(?) Academy. But tonight, my dear

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friend, the draw card will be someone, not a poet exactly, a celebrity, [unidentified], the field person, and most devoted tour of [unidentified] nut, he will declaim with rhetorical hands and take all to a higher plane where even the gods will

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be throwing money. Notice too the audience playing its part with choruses of ‘wah-wah‘, it will feel auditorium like the houris in the highest rose garden of paradise. You will not be disappointed, I assure you. As for me, I feel I cannot make

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it. These things do go on a while. Indians have no sense of time. Still, do bring along the program notes. I will write something for the paper. We must encourage, not discourage. So then until tomorrow, I will come to you at the hotel. We will

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have a drink, then take in the Jahangir gallery, a fresh exhibition of stunning paintings by Anil Hariharan, without a doubt India's Francis Bacon, such savoir faire. Oh, you could- we could go to the lecture on Derrida at Alliance

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Francais next to Pen. Just think of anything you want to see. My days are yours in the city of seven islands. Okay, Morton we can flip the tape at this point. This is called GHAZAL OF THE WALKER

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The day of singing has not come. The day of singing has not come. He works to find the last path home. The day of singing is a walk. The day of singing is a walk under the sky. He calls a home. The day of singing as a bird. The day of singing is a

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bird lost in the blue mask of his home. The day of singing is a tree. The day of singing is a tree found by the bird who calls it home. The day of singing goes on inside. The day of singing goes on inside. The breathing walker going home. The day of

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singing is a door. The day of singing is a door through which he calls to lead him home. The day of singing makes him sing. The day of singing makes him sing to restore the memory of his home. The day of singing waits for him. The day of

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singing waits for him who says high voices are his home. But when will that day of singing come? When will a day of singing come, he walks to find his last path home. His last path home. India is a culture that's deeply rooted in family life. And I

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like to read you a poem from a sequence of four poems and this seek- this-This part of the poem is called: FAMILIES Families of Dravidians intermarried with Aryans,

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[unidentified], Huns. Fami ies of Arabs, Turks and Tart The third section of my book returns to Australia And for rs, families of moguls, fa ilies of white men, families of Brahma, Shiva, Kali Durga, fam lies of Nanak, Mahavira, Buddh

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, families of Sufi renou cing all but Allah, families of Moses, Jesus, or Esther. Fami ies of Maharishi topknots und r turbans, families of [ nidentified], third eyes of ed powder. This family weighs nly a shaved tuft, the skul

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caps of this family are fac ng Mecca. Families of sp nning wheels, cane, knives, lows, families of chili and buff lo butter. Families of gy sy cards, families of Pe sian wheels, families of fi h hunters on midnight river

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, families of congress, fami ies of communist, militant grit n the government's e e, families of bribe, unfair election tactics, families of b sses, families of thugs, famili s of reformers, families of i posters, self-made holy men, pro

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ectors or pretenders, r vers of maharajahs gone far unde ground, lineages of [unidentif ed] abducting gold and women. Well fed families checked platfo ms of families, endless traffi of uncles and aunts. Puja rooms are family gods and the human

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[unidentifed] lies, devout famil es, hospitable families, famil es of priests, families of ruler , families of shopkeepers, famil es under the yoke, famil es of tribals, families of [unid ntified], cast of inheritance, nd the eternal outsiders.

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some time I lived in Sydney, the capital of New South Wales. It's Australia's largest city, and it's a harbor side city, a very beautiful place. And I lived on the harbour front for a time. So I'll read you a few poems and finish with these poems from a

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section called: CAFE PARADISO Regatta, out there 100 spinnakers smudge like wet paint, sweat for two tickets to Bermuda. We are just steering

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our eyes into the fizzy horizon, that sparkling region where sea mirrors shine, and gulls dive into a wider dimension. Soon, Gull of Sydney will be taking line honors, a froth kiss of champagne and oysters. The Yacht Club will uncork it‘s disco

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noises until only a late night gull show is playing out on the pylon. What remains is breathless, a ton more rapid than the first wild party of summer. Steamy into the precise taste of saliva beyond the evenings glassy luster, not wine

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waterfalls into the sea, regatta sag in the harbor, steamy, near the cool afterwards, the still blue water. Probably the most famous emblem of Australia, most famous symbol of Australia is the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

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And let me read you a short poem which called UNDER THE HARBOUR BRIDGE. We‘re quite a rich culture, but like America, we have many poor people in the cities. The men who sleep under the bridge have sores on their

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cheeks like dried raisins. They party, they do, they argue, they keep coping all night with hash girls. The men who sleep under the bridge have hand scared like kitchen crossgrain. They strike at invisible enemies. Cut like the snake, mad with the methow.

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The men who sleep under the bridge have wounded egos, acid stomachs, they catch a fag, a sandwich, a dollar, living in the side pockets of inner suburbs. The men who sleep under the bridge are indignant as beaten up lovers, can no longer

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fight off the voices they had tossed and smashed and finally [unidentified]. The last years of tracking them down. You might not have picked up the bit of Australian diction there. There's a phrase "they cut like the snake" means drunk,

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basically, it's sort of an Australianism. This poem is a love poem. It's the first part of a sequence of three sestinas. And it's called CAFE PARADISO

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So we used to talk for hours in that cafe, touring with ease like 12 meter yachts. I'd rave about some important subject while she'd spoon the froth off my coffee. She'd say, ‘do you want the rest, sweet?‘ I shake my head pursuing my theme. The

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cobalt harbor was an easy theme. It's garbage barges, slow motion yachts, the ferry coming and going as we drank coffee, a baklava, read poems sometimes sweet, sometimes piercing, but poetry was the subject. We spooned it down like sugar in

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that cafe. We had a window seat east in the cafe, a painter would have seen in us a ripe subject, sitting there together, cherries sweet, and it was so easy to drink the coffee, or casually look out the window for a theme that might be passing

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like one of the yachts. Maybe this is why I wrote about the yacht so much. Unable to be my own true theme I choose a more spectacular subject. It had to be strange, it had to be sweet exotically seen from harborside cafe, but never direct like a

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cup of coffee. They were more like herb teas than coffee, my postcards from paradise, pale an sweet. Was it she and me poetry, or the arts that tugge us each time to the cafe. W were tiny details in some large theme that was graduall

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becoming a subject. Livin outside the cafe became ou subject. We needed fresh air not this pastel theme. We had t stop calling each other sweet We had to drink other kinds o coffee. It was time to cut fre like racing yachts. It was tim

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to pay our bill at the cafe. S we left the coffee cafe of th calmed yachts, released fro sweet subjects and grand theme we went our separate ways This poem is an ode, it's a kind of my version of a Pindaric ode.

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In fact, these poems predate my ghazals. After I'd written a few long poem, I felt the need to write short ones. That- let me read you this poem AN ODE AT NIGHT which is really my sense of Australian culture.

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An ode at night in a warm subtropical city, on the edge of a dry continent is a signpost song, some jazz for the happy, living close to water i'm quite content with my chromosomed talents passed to me 30 odd years back. I'm paying low rent

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for this cockroach flat and this body. Outside the breeze is stirring inside a tree, maybe the mango, pawpaw, bamboo, or tall avocado on my edge of the dry continent. I'm gazing laconically over waves heaping and emptying like spoons, while

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slow trawlers patter among the prawn schools sent this way and that, as the spotlight weaves like a stick setting ants on the go. I've had some good times with a one man tent to find that paradisal plot to put down roots somewhere on this dry continent.

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I've hitched my lifts and pitched my tent in caravan parks, deserts, and on the sand dunes. My blues harp has played its aching tunes, as I've wrapped inside nights of black mink. Yet, staring at fires has taught me to think and thank my

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lucky stars for these army boots that have returned me to the warm subtropical city on the edge of a dry continent. So I can enjoy tonight's disco fairy flooding into the bay building outsole as if bent from a body, it winds and a journey for the

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last time, not having sent the music, but transmigratory. Its heart of glass cracks like the smack of gunshot on the round trip to Circular Quay from Snail's Bay by the edge of the dry continent. While stereo(?) houses near this queen of

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harbors, compete like hostesses with better plates of pate, yet keeping clear of deep water argument. For this is a city of cosmopolitan hungers wearing fancy dress and flippancy in choice restaurants like the Moroccan Tent, the Burmese Bash,

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or perhaps the Poor Man's Taj, all on the edge of a dry continent, where first food was a leathery lent of dour choice, flour made and Billy Tea got from a green England over the sea. Now the culture holidays fourth in a jet and places

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caviar alongside the Vegemite. An Aussie abroad is a homesick ward at large, but returns from walkabout to party on at home edgier on the edge of the dry continent. Having read the old world as a term of [unidentified] encyclopedia

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that's made him less content. Here money runs like race horses on loam, water drips ritually from the chrome faucet, but that cappuccino over there in Rome was sweeter than this land of "thou shalt not want." Because the hunger travels with us it

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would seem, back to the age of the dry continent with a daily mirror issue of one's face needs more than a cover up with apricot skin cream. And in such rich days, few camping in a tent, except on weekends while the speed boats race, yet people

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are mosquitoes who anxiously roam fast or slow frequency, high and low, and must pay rent like me. I'm one light on in the street, one of many on this age of a dry continent, trying out a clarity and contentment, practicing whimsy when the

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wallet is empty, it's a good test of character and maybe a destiny. Earning little helps me quest keeps- owning little keeps me questing on to hold the harbor in my reflection, writing night odes to a warm, subtropical city.

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Let me finish with a ghazal called GHAZAL OF EPILOGUE Each day is always fresh above the newsstand. Each day is always fresh above the newsstand. The breeze of it reminds that I am in your hands. Yellow buds explode along the

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winter branch. Yellow buds explode along the winter branch. Yet I only want to see that I am in your hands. The era of mistakes will soon be at an end. The era of mistakes will soon be at an end. Yet was there ever a time I was never in your hands.

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From country to country, from lover to lover. From country to country, from lover to lover. I've been led to find I was always in your hands. Perhaps there is some book of lifelong recitation. Perhaps there is some book of lifelong

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recitation. The book of destiny is open wide and I am in your hands. Moonies(?) find style and intricate sentiments are over. Moonies find style and intricate sentiments are over. New books may be written but he is in your hands.