The Operation

Becoming the person you have always been
inside cannot be rushed. For some the dressing up
in secret clothes at home — batiks and silks,
caftans, sarongs — is all they ever need.
For others, food comes next: vaguely Asian takeaway
in confidential brown paper bags. Only the brave
come out in public: sitting in shop-front restaurants
proudly becoming what they eat, stir-fry and rice,
and more rice, in small civilised portions. Wherever,
you must use only chopsticks, or the washed right hand
alone, and rise always from the floor still hungry,
feeling smaller already, and daintier, and more refined.
Soon the hormone shots will darken the skin.
Submit to these procedures first: the chest-waxing,
the lid-narrowing. And the nose-job, of course:
you are leaving Big-Nose Europe behind.
There can be no turning back; you are ready now

The Dark Side of the Head

I.M. Gwen Harwood, 1920-1995

Just around the corner of the eye,
at every reach of its big screen,
there is a magic which is neither
black nor white, but only absent:
the disappearance of all world.

Even when the eyes are shut,
and all the field is pink or dark,
it still unhappens, at the rim
— a sudden gradual nothing,
beneath the notice, or beyond.

I sometimes hope that if
my head jerks leftwards, quick
as warp, I might just catch
the edge of right side visual field,
as if there is no dark side of the head

The Blue Room

I sit on a warm stone step in a doorway
to the Blue Room, the Morning Room.

There is much bee-noise and the noise
of birds: the acoustics are fine in the Blue Room.

Usually it may have rained overnight
in the Blue Room: this clear aquarium air.

In the Blue Room there is always one dove
— hidden here, hidden here —

and many honeyeaters,
up for hours, loony as tunes.

Today the Blue Room is available.
I sit among ants, between bees,

amid designer vegetation:
fine-detailed, non-repeating,

in the Blue Room, the Morning Room,
the wide Waiting Room.

Razor

Carving this same face
out of soap, each morning
slightly less perfectly.