after Rosalba-Paul / Hurstville Station, Platform 4 by Paul Higgs



Here below, the platform is dim,

water rushes from sinks, gutters,

flushed toilets, sluiced through

reckless downpipes 
and even though it hasn’t rained for weeks

the weep-holes are slick:

isosceles of soot, of fecal umber,

algal verdure, of lime condensate. 
~
In the gallery hung between

polemics and disco, the work

appears stolid: ‘string, pins, wood,

mesh, acrylic paint on paper’. 
He says brush marks are a thing, not an abstraction:

take any object, a yellow ticket say (or a word),

move it around until…
~
The trains are late and the Waterfall service

now leaves from platform 2.

There are no straight lines

just a recursive descent off the plateau. 
I dream of ordinary days: precarious

carparks, arguing over shopping lists,

the last time we caught the express to the city. 
Take the escalator up to the mall: a Coles,

a greengrocer with bitter melon, coconuts,

trays of khajuri and sel roti, Taiwanese boys

in line for bubble tea. 
Me and you, one and two

the incantation goes.

1 2 buckle my shoe, 3 4 open the door. 
~
The train grinds on the curves,

through cuttings, abandoned works

rucked beneath the scarp.
I’m in the last carriage. Across from me

are two explorers, she ruffles his buzzcut.

I envy them this spectacle: the tender rainforest,

gliders on bald hill, a glimmer of creekwater

even though it hasn’t rained for weeks. 
How do we meet our dead? 

In the Quiet Carriage, a priest opens the door

and it’s you, halfway along staring at the blackened

dreamscape. Coins of sunshine, then a tunnel.

My heart so loud it echoes and moans

                   and when day returns

there’s nothing (of course).
How do we meet our dead? 

After she died, he reworked it,

hammered on a balcony, a string of bunting.

went back over, wrote her name

in capitals, talismanic like cutting

into a tree-trunk or a good arm,

staunch the bleeding with ashes.

He re-named it Rosalba-Paul,
Says he doesn’t want the work

to be a sentimental memorial

to a couple,

                   one who died;

I see nothing else (of course).