Twenty Minutes in Sydney

This city is white
as if it had not been built on brown bones,
as if civilization had sprung easily from beneath Cook’s colonial collar
to flourish here instantly on the coast,
over the ochre and blue-green shore.
Now it bustles sunburn and silk ties,
epilipetic with traffic and mirrored sky-scratchers.
No one looks up or down.

There is no busker’s hope, no grit along the harbor,
no homeless hunger sleeping beneath the snowless sky,
only this proud commute,
urgent, helpless against the sea.
Where are the starving poets,
the stink of dreams unfurled in this adolescent town?
Where was Sydney when the Beats were dying?

The city wants the light, it wants the song
of more ancient bricks over more ancient bones.
The gold rush is gone,
but it needs to believe it’s own postcard,
knowing that no one suffers
like they suffer up north.