Palmer Street 1963(a retort to a poem by rae desmond jones)
In Palmer Lane, off Palmer Street,
in grimy Sydney town,
an uncounted horde
of men and boys
drift and lurch
up and down, up and down,
searching, sweating, ogling;
the men silently braying
like six a.m. race horses;
the boys laughing
in dark anticipatory glee,
fingering small hard erections
and desperately wishing
they had enough cash.It is not yet dark;
the light in the eyes of the tortured poetó
six feet of university brainwashed
guilt and intellectual pride
struggling with unseemly desireó
are bright with a kind of madness.The lights behind the 'girls' are dim;
the 'girls' sit in houses 60-100 yrs old;
they are not quite as old as the houses;
they are fat, overpainted, ugly
or thin and hard as nails
their hoons stink like weasles:
it is really Squizzy Taylor country:
grey on the outside, black on the inside.The face of the greengrocer
from Marrickville is squat
and covered in sweat.
The crowd pushes; he resists,
goes to the half-opened stall,
asks the price, gulps, goes in.Round the corner, in Crown St.,
small businessmen mock-worship
Garibaldi and sip espresso:
the wave of unfulfilled mankind
flows on . . .
Inside the minute house
Guiseppi Pannetoni
dreams he is back in Calabria:
Teresias-hungry, he thrusts
blindly, falls flat on his face
in a pool of oil; the laughter
of the ragged raggazi
stings his ears
as the oil stings his penis.
He feels sick and lunges
out into the night, cold and alone.The stink of garbage
and cats' piss stings his nostrils.
There are no olive trees
and he cannot smell the sea.
Adrian Rawlins
