Sport 10: Autumn 1993
♣ Tony Beyer — exploded view
♣ Tony Beyer
exploded view
winter saturday nights of 1956
I was allowed
if I went with my brothers
to walk to the great south road dairy
for the 8 o'clock
we looked at the front page
football cartoon
under streetlights on the way home
good news from hamilton
bad news for the maoris
this was before the handy stores
in our own road
sold everything from eel spears to emetics
but had to draw a blind
over some items on sundays
the year of suez
and dad saying his old unit
put ashore at ismailia
would sort the wogs out in no time
eden or no eden
also my first cigarette
reprise of which I postponed
for three years until I was eleven
with my confusion
between hungary and hungry
what happened always
of course happens no longer
the house and our parents are gone
and though still geographically near
we have scattered in our ways
travelling outwards
we travel in closer detail
slow then fast again then slow
the zapruder film
or the challenger launch
those randomly numbered
switchboard plugs
of events that confine an actual lifetime
enhanced as much by soap opera
as by technology
history is what grown ups talk about
and what dates them
the perishable past as imperishable subject
just as I am silently proud
of having grown into mine
the president waving from the motorcade
a painfully photogenic icon
like the clowns
beaten by the police in my city
on the last day of the springbok tour in 1981