Pension Day In A
City Park
ARRIVING
In
the heat city cauldron where nature's retreat
is
a poor person's paradise for doddering feet,
shuffling
their way along cracked concrete paths
to
the central fountain's waterless baths,
beneath
significantly ageing palms
the
scene is set for old comrades at arms.
Though
shadows are still short,
brown
bagged bottles of port
mean
their pensions been spent
and
now they’re all hell bent
on
cerebral bliss down alcohol way
in
crossing the threshold there's no dismay,
for
they drink and they drink
but
they don't stop to think
not
even one minute
or
their minds won't be in it.
TELLING
TALES
Yet
the regulars know exactly their part
old
Stumpy Jane plays the Kings Cross tart
for
the boys from the front, back home on leave,
with
flaunts and taunts she flatters to deceive.
While
Tommy's Churchill, much maligned,
recounts
brave battles from his fading mind,
like
the African desert, the sands of his time
cover
up the carnage, hide the reason and rhyme.
Like
his namesake, Monty, a hero in tanks,
beloved
both by officers and other ranks,
pounded
by Rommel, the scenes he narrates,
weeps
now in the death of his desert rat mates.
From
Kokoda, Changi and the Burma trail
uniformed
stories in turn they regale
of
conditions so squalid and punishments tough,
where
the bravest of brave said enough is enough,
gasped
their last breaths bequeathed lessons to learn,
for
survivors to lobby on their hero’s return,
swearing
never to enter such theatres again,
but
Nam features too, tinged with orange rain.
BED
TIME
When
liquor has finally quenched life's spark
they
blend with the benches, its way after dark;
the
lone wail of a siren, a stray dog's bark
the
night time sounds of that warm city park
fade
away in their bedroom, that great outdoors,
disregarding
the signs, park covenants and laws
they
now sleep their gift to a young generation,
in
freedom they dream of Anzac veneration.
GOING
HOME
But
harsh, the noise of commuter intrusion
(that
vision splendid was just an illusion)
wakes
up the old statues from bedtime benches
their
noses wrinkle at grog vomit stenches;
coughing
and wheezing and blinking at light
sad
city morning breakfast sight,
they
farewell their bench mates
desert,
jungle and trench mates
to
return to the hovels, rewards of life past
having
spent the pensions they wish were their last.
