Awakening In Westbury Street

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Awakening In Westbury Street
having completed fifty-eight laps of the Sun and finding a Clive James poem on a table


where once were wood-sylphs, pixies, sprites and elves
women are angels now
slower, softer
coming in that hour before droll wakefulness intrudes

sepia, or warm as burnished oloroso by the fire
they coddle me and tell me of desire so demanding
that I wake here with a grin
double-handing

some call like wolverines across a decade
sometimes it’s forty years
from before the pantyhose came in and shut everything off
and Gossamer occupied the hair of the nurses

some smother me with breast flesh
and some are out of reach
some drink me in great surges
mighty breakers on the beach


Philip White











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while we were falling in love

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while we were falling in love


while we were falling in love
I was embarrassed to intrude on the magpies
who were training you to feed them on your balcony

but beyond them gazed at me the gulf st vincent
patron of vine dressers school girls and lost things

such cool chrome eyes and steady that water

you’ll be all right philip they said

I felt like that later in your bed


philip white












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suicide blues

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Suicide Blues


Baby I’m in your grave
Oh Baby, I’m in your grave
One less soul for you to save

When we lived I was just me
When we lived I was just me
No-one else for me to be

When you die they won’t stand round
They’ll walk away they won’t stand round
Leave you with these bones you found

They won’t know I’m lying here
Just won’t know I’m lying here
Lie down soft and fuck your fear

It won’t matter I got here first
Makes no difference I got here first
I’m gonna have you for dessert

Hey Baby I’m in your grave
Oooh Baby I’m in your grave
One less soul for you to save


Philip White













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Hymn For Michael Wordley

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Hymn For Michael Wordley
on the occasion of his 50th birthday


beyond the fence trees fizz

the close trees,
hitch-hikers from the North,
are giant rustling grasses:
the silent eucalypts admit them

they bounce and pop with birdies
dancing a bonnie bagatelle
while their silverbacks do politics

if it had different colour
- not all green like this -
it would explain the Chinese invention of fireworks

above me the hands of man have made a patio of oregon
with American vines strangling American wood, anti-clockwise,
while beneath this poem a jarrah bench swells

welling against the tracks of the planing machine
it wants its old shape back

behind surges a mighty house in which a family happened
smitten with timber and sound it survived the Jesus thing

smug as mud

and lets herbs and fowls through the door to make more

there is no emptyness
but much where nothing is


Philip White













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