Maybe today was how old people might live

in a perfect world. In the morning the pool

for me and the exercise class for him

because we are both of us trying to keep moving

for as long as possible. I float in water

that holds me up, I drift from one end

of the indoor pool to the other, flapping

arms and legs because proper backstroke

would use muscles that are under

assault from my immune system. He

is dancing around with dumbbells, he comes

out of those classes quite tired. We go

home. Grab lunch. I spend an hour

on the phone to Jennifer who is taking

my long poem apart, section by section,

and checking that everything works,

which it doesn’t quite, but it will. An hour

is about as much as I can manage. So

then there are a few quiet hours, and then

it’s off to an opening! – we take the tram

and walk through to Fitzroy and the baker

that hosts small exhibitions, and there

is Iain with his latest work: late life

discovery of acrylic paint: a football player,

the races at Hanging Rock in miniature

seen from between enormous boulders,

and colonial confrontations. The problem

is how to deal with such toxic events,

he says in his introduction, and then

everyone gets back to talking and drinking

and eating. But we have to go because

we have tickets for a band! – Ezra Collective

from south London, my old stamping ground,

is that partly why I love their music? – and doors

open around eight. Another tram

and another walk, and we have a drink

in the front bar – a light beer for me – and

then they let us through. The Croxton Bandroom

once famous for its sticky floor, is now

airconditioned, smoke free, exits marked

in green neon, and over an hour to wait,

and some young person is producing

electronic music from a bank of tech

on stage to keep us happy, and the two

of us find steps at the side which we

can just about sit down on: top step,

a wall behind us, uncomfortable but

better than standing – and another beer

for both of us, and that is quite enough,

and the place is filling up with people

young enough to be our grandchildren, and we

are lucky to have our step, which is a magnet

for other people whose legs are not quite what

they used to be, and he’s checking the cricket

on his phone, and a couple of forty-somethings

settle down next to me, and I say to the bloke,

seen this band before? and he says, no

but his girlfriend has, and I tell him

how this is our third time for some of these guys

and he tells me how he moved from Perth

to Melbourne for the music scene, and that is

how he met his girlfriend, they’ve only been

together for three months, it’s music

that brought them together, and he wants to know

what bands I liked when I was that age (gesturing

to the crowd on the dancefloor) and I tell him

oh it wasn’t music so much then as politics,

women’s liberation, the anti-nuclear movement,

and I don’t regret that at all, I just wish

I’d fitted in more music, paid more attention.

Now the young person with the electronics

is winding up their act, and the dancefloor

is getting excited, and finally the musos

roll happily onto the stage like old hands,

they know this crowd is theirs, and we’re away –

and standing up there the two of us

old people are dancing carefully,

side to side, one leg then the other,

and the band holds us all together as

one human organism for an hour

and a half – we are in their hands. Femi

the drummer does his usual sermon,

comes out from behind his drums,

he grabs a microphone, he asks us if we’re

all right and the crowd screams yes, and then

he tells us what we know, that these times

are terrible and how can we live with this

and what he wants to tell us is that when

times are terrible – which may be most times

but this time in particular – what we need

to get through things and try to keep

dealing with them and not get sucked in

to hopelessness and anger is simply

joy – like we are having together

this evening, it doesn’t change anything

at all, but when we all go home we

will have that joy, that little bit

of something different to sustain us

whatever happens, and the crowd

is bopping away to something coming out

of the bank of electronics gizmos where Joe

the keyboard man is nodding his shaggy

head in time to his own rhythms – and people’s

voices are raised, this is a revival

without religion, maybe one day we

will turn to some stranger at another gig

and say, did you see them at Croxton? – that

was a wonderful night, and tomorrow

I will remind myself of the names

of tenor sax and trumpet – bass guitar

I know already, Femi’s little brother –

and afterwards it’s buttoning up

jackets and winding scarves round necks

and the windy tram stop and home. So late,

and the cricket’s on, and we sit

woozily in front of the TV, still

a bit lit up, way past bedtime, not

ready to go to bed, minds still dancing.