Poem
Jaya Savige
Correct Weight
Correct Weight
Correct Weight
Camouflaged against the smug mahogany
of the Red Lion in Westminster,
the sitting member drains his knockoff Stella—beyond the bronze Churchill disingenuous
tourists mumble hymns for free
entry to the abbey—and wonders
whether in Australia, like the constellations,everything is upside down: a world replete
with Swift’s Houyhnhnms, where beasts scold
men—centaurs gripping Lapiths by the throat—
rather than the other way around.
It’s said their beer is best served icy cold.Glancing like Orpheus at the underground,
something in him clicks like a starting gate
when the riders are finally set: how being
clenched between the buttocks of a thoroughbred
could be a kind of noble anonymity.
In such a place, one might take the features
of their betters—equine face, parted mane,
shoulders sloping gracefully beneath
a shiny coat—and, despite the yahoos reveling
in their fetters, or perhaps because of them,
come also to love the raw heat
of being flogged toward the post;
or if not, enough at least to stay in itto the last, for the will to not diminish,
to leap out of the ground and take it by a nose
in a controversial photo finish—
and see off the protest at the weigh-in.
© 2011, Jaya Savige
From: Surface to Air
Publisher: University of Queensland Press, St Lucia
From: Surface to Air
Publisher: University of Queensland Press, St Lucia
Poems
Poems of Jaya Savige
Close
Correct Weight
Camouflaged against the smug mahogany
of the Red Lion in Westminster,
the sitting member drains his knockoff Stella—beyond the bronze Churchill disingenuous
tourists mumble hymns for free
entry to the abbey—and wonders
whether in Australia, like the constellations,everything is upside down: a world replete
with Swift’s Houyhnhnms, where beasts scold
men—centaurs gripping Lapiths by the throat—
rather than the other way around.
It’s said their beer is best served icy cold.Glancing like Orpheus at the underground,
something in him clicks like a starting gate
when the riders are finally set: how being
clenched between the buttocks of a thoroughbred
could be a kind of noble anonymity.
In such a place, one might take the features
of their betters—equine face, parted mane,
shoulders sloping gracefully beneath
a shiny coat—and, despite the yahoos reveling
in their fetters, or perhaps because of them,
come also to love the raw heat
of being flogged toward the post;
or if not, enough at least to stay in itto the last, for the will to not diminish,
to leap out of the ground and take it by a nose
in a controversial photo finish—
and see off the protest at the weigh-in.
From: Surface to Air
Correct Weight
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