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Sport 25: Spring 2000

Jennifer Compton — Eternity

page 161

Jennifer Compton

Eternity

Arthur Stace wrote Eternity on the pavements of Sydney for 37 years

I never wrote Eternity.
I hadn't slept for years, night after night,
I tracked the old hand, to be harmless,
chalk in the pocket of my tweed hacking jacket
—the chalk's still there in my jacket pocket—
I wrote—STAY REAL!
I wrote—STOP THINKING!
I wrote—PAY ATTENTION!
I wrote my juvenilia.
I hadn't slept for years.

The girl who wore a bat's mummy on her lapel
—this is all true this is not a bottled joke—
lived upstairs but she didn't have a stairs so you ascended by
an arrangement of ropes and pulleys attached to her bannister.
As she stood above me and I grasped the ropes
the way in which you understand the language
of every person in the world was given to me.

And this is the way in which you understand
the language of every person in the world.

But I forget myself. I lost it in Ultimo.
Be cruel with your past and those who would keep you there.
Thanks for that.