Randwick Bridge
The women call me Genghis Khan
For my chains and endless beard
Holding children to their chest
Dirtied little faces beaming
From their sodden naval sheets
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The children stare with mouths agape
And giggle through their fluffy cloaks
At strange gruntings and moanings at night
Yet there isn’t much to see
With the wool pulled over their eyes
-
The men call me a hero tramp
For my brave, endless beggary
They count their shillings from their day
From their labour deftly spread about
The infinity of a day
-
Randwick Bridge sings to me;
A tarmac above my watery grave,
Whilst I dream of making passage there,
The filtered light speaks miracles
To my yellow, calloused skin.
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Each day I stare with a fish-eye
Poised steady upon my view,
Upon our quarters beneath the world
The edges turn all fuzzy and blue,
For all visions come through dreaming
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Footbridge to my sleeping quarters
Promenade to my begging spot.
Pier for my idle mind
And my teacher most kind indeed;
I march as a dead man in ether.
-
For one fateful day I lost my way
And fell into the water
Beneath the surface I saw so clearly
The strong foundations of the Bridge
And fell to sleep by the calm undulating vision
-
Before my fatal step
I etched my story into woodwork
My few lines of poetry to say:
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“This wooden beam hath been my totem,
My ascension and my fall,
Look all ye upon its form
Like a cruel splinter in the sea.
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I climbed the broken ladder rungs
A passage into death
And through my misery I hope
You learn from my mistake.
-
I took the fatal passageway
To dote upon the Bridge,
Sweet in all her promises
But cruel in passing her gifts.”
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