It is one of my roles as a designated ACT Living Treasure to further the cause of romance in our city. So here I offer Canberra's lovers, to give them ideas for composing their own love poems, a prose poem I have just given its world premiere at a suburban soiree.
As background, I explain that I am a doting fan of the sensitive, unpretentious contemporary US poet Billy Collins. He was Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. Why doesn't Australia have a poet laureate? Why doesn't the ACT?
In his poem Litany Collins begins by poking fun at pretentious and soppy love poetry, even beginning by quoting some pretentious and soppy lines from an actual poem by a poet he names. But then he, Collins, goes off at a witty tangent. Here I have reverently borrowed Collins' brilliant idea and have imitated some of its special style, to make a poem for a modern-day Canberran Australian addressing his or her Beloved.
Federal Capital Litany
Beloved, you are the bread and the knife, the crystal goblet and the wine. You are the dew on the morning grass and also the $19 smashed avocado (with fetta and dukkah) on toast, and the $4.40 soy cappuccino.
You are the joyous summer splash of the raven in the Garran garden's birdbath. You are the hand-knitted beanie (in the team's famous colours) on the head of the fanatical, tattooed fan of the CBR Brave ice hockey team. You are the leaps in the air of maestro Nicholas Milton as he conducts the Canberra Symphony Orchestra in something blockbusting by Beethoven.
However, you are not the wind in the Persian Walnut trees of Forest 88 of the National Arboretum. Nor are you, quite yet, the environmentally musical whirr of the wind turbines beside Lake George.
And I'm sorry my darling but you have tickets on yourself if you think you are the pine-scented air of Haig Park. Crikey! The vanity of it! There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air of Haig Park. It is possible that you are the platypus in the billabong at Tidbinbilla, and perhaps even the seagull on the bald bronze head of Mahatma Gandhi's statue in Glebe Park.
But you are not even close to being the Boobook Owl sitting on the Hills Hoist at dusk, and a quick look in the mirror will show that you are neither the Ugg boots in the closet corner or the patriotic jar of Vegemite asleep on its pantry shelf.
But of course we are both some things together.
We are the RSPCA black cat with just three legs and the RSPCA mongrel puppy with just three personalities. Together we are the prayers for the early impeachment of Donald Trump. We are the dancing in the street whenever the Liberals are humiliated at ACT elections. We are the well-thumbed Lonely Planet Guide to Finland on the bedside table.
But neither of us, thank goodness, are the algal blooms in Lake Burley Griffin, or the skeletons rattling in the closets of some of the clergy of Canberra and Goulburn. Neither of us are the shameful secrets that keep some members of the ACT Legislative Assembly awake at night prowling the corridors of their lonely McMansions (with a tear in every room).
But it might interest you to know, speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world, that I am the sound of rain on the roof of the heritage-listed Red Tennis Club. I also happen to be the bemused expression on the face of the raven pecking at the morning ice on the winter bird bath. And I am the on-court screams and war cries of Maria Sharapova and the irreverent and pommy-shocking audible obscenities of our Nick Kyrgios at Wimbledon.
But don't worry my Beloved. I'm not the bread and the knife.You are still the bread and the knife. You will always be the bread and the knife, not to mention the $19 smashed avocado (with fetta and dukkha) which is - somehow - on the wholegrain, gluten-free toast.