Byron Beynon
Drive-in Melbourne
The river Yarra cuts and motions
in a city with drive-in bakeries,
bottle-shops, cinemas,
and fast-foods, claiming
a title like a contender
“the cultural centre of Australia",
I expected to find a drive-in
bookshop and art gallery.
The joke of weather
as four distinct seasons
appear in one day,
as trains, solid as liners
skate their yellow and green livery
through the centre, around
the Ivanhoe of suburbia.
Place of Ned Kelly s nemesis,
he plunged without armour
into the darkness of the scaffold.
Near the Young & Jacksons hotel
I witnessed an agricultural parade
down energetic Swanston street,
as fifteen hundred merino
commuted towards Flinders station,
followed by a farmyard of goats, horses, and dogs.
In Australia there is always
more space as days leap
over younger shoulders in a city
beyond Europe,
an origin of tragedy
brought at first tide by the sea.
Page(s) 73
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The