Having Stood On the Ledge – Lynn Hard

[1938–current, born America, migrated to Australia in 1977]

Having stood on the ledge
and watched the crowd gather:
a country fair painting
of sprayed acrylics:
an anticipation
of splatter,
I know the indifference to height,
that the ledge
is an improvement
on the hotel room with its special channel
which endlessly rolls the time,
the weather,
and the wind direction by,
and I know the indifference to the street,
just another cord in the net.

Having taken the step
and felt my intestines
uncoiled by gravity
I have dropped
like a fluttering x,
a dark cross of St Andrew,
watching the crowd
make a place for me.
The awnings flash by:
blurs of test patterns,
lodgers gouached by the tube
do not look up
from loving Lucy,
they go past like credits
scrolling up.
I drop,
my clothes make an annoying buffet
and worse,

the street gets no nearer.


Source: Hard, L 1993, Dancing on the Drainboard, Angus & Robertson, Australia, pp. 65–66.

Reflections on 22 August, 1991 – Lynn Hard

[1938–current, born America, migrated to Australia in 1977]

Friends,
names,
die:
the members of the cast
are thinned

old movies
we haven’t seen in years,
disappoint

items
we’ve bought since we can remember
are no longer
stocked

and life
is a steady downpour.

except,
in the USSR
where there’s hardly enough room in squares
to stand,
to affirm
that the unknown is half-full
that the people have a right to their space
even if it’s shared with tanks,
that disillusion must be preceded
by illusion
and that is our most foreign and precious substance.

Source: Hard, L 1993, Dancing on the Drainboard, Angus & Robertson, Australia, p. 4.

I Cannot Say -- Lynn Hard

[1938–current, born America, migrated to Australia in 1977]

I cannot say 
what other men desire 
in women,

what causes 
the meetings beyond the first,

but I 
am attracted 
to the lady fading

With her beauty 
like a dropped vase 
and the seam 
between glaze and clay 
evident, 

it is then, 
if there is to be any style 
beyond fashion, 
and utility to the style 
that it may be found.

It is then, 
when she is deciding 
on what to jettison 
like an overburdened vessel 
that she may most rewardingly 
be boarded.

It is then, 
midst all the confusion, 
her vulnerability an innocence, 
that one may want her 
for her previous, ageing youth 
or her present youthful age.


Source: Hard, L 1993, Dancing on the Drainboard, Angus & Robertson, Australia, pp. 16–17.

Straight She Is – Lynn Hard

[1938–current, born America, migrated to Australia in 1977]

Straight she is
like spruce or pine
and her hair
if she’d let it
would hang
straight down her back.
Her clothes are firmly divided
into segments
of sweater and skirt.
And to see her sitting
at her geometrical desk
one would never imagine
that inside she is all curve
and arabesque.

Source: Hard, L 1993, Dancing on the Drainboard, Angus & Robertson, Australia, p. 18.

Nights in the Pool -- Lynn Hard

[1938–current, born America, migrated to Australia in 1977]

Black thoughts I have had of you
nestling close to me with your sharp edges
and well I might
being a vinyl animal
that people in bathing costumes
ride through the chlorinated night.

Source: Hard, L 1993, Dancing on the Drainboard, Angus & Robertson, Australia, p. 3.