for Philip Salom
He is lying sprawled within one of the spaces

          between the spaces,

dreaming of a perfect seven-eyed pavilion

          in burnt sienna, at rest

behind bars under a gun-grey broth drinking

          the Rome air naked.
In his dream he computes a pert little flowerpot

          in the one unblinded window

at his back, and he conjures an enchanted cable

          slung across the chasm

from his terrazzo to those blushing geraniums,

          which he will pluck

and offer to her, the lovely principessa of the Dish,

          imprisoned for epochs

behind a bravado of bricked-up oval apertures

          and cruelly lorded over

by this lurid deconstructed meccano mushroom,

          terrible, toxic and grotesque.
But how will he then clear the second precipice

          (given a safe return to balcony)

to broach her? Another tightrope? In his reverie

          he scans the skyline’s horizon –

perhaps that corner ledge like a leftover stub

          is a clue, a sign, a foothold;

yet even if he managed to overleap that limbo

          and grasp the cornerstone

and writhe up onto the deck – will she still

          want him? And what if

he slipped, plummeting headlong into the waiting

          unknown abysses below?
Or – what if he’s captured by the gloating molester

          and strapped for all time

to that rusty scaffold, or nestled and riveted,

          a modern Prometheus,

into its curvature, to rotate like a rock staring forever

          into naked dreamless space?


Notes:

In response to Rooftops by Jeffrey Smart, 71.6 cm x 100.4 cm,

Joseph Brown Collection, National Gallery of Victoria.