A room of one s own

Women's College, UQ


I couldn't say which window was mine,
nor do I recollect the view,
except that a cypress grew below
where some nights a young student stood,
calling me to invite him in, so I'd go
downstairs and open the door
to send him away, not wanting him near,
needing my solitude more...

I remember the lake's proximity,
studying late while the campus slept;
water amplified bird polyphonies
all the long night through.
Voices of waders hailed from Siberia,
spoke no Greek...

Russian studies divided my week
into prose composition, Church Slavonic,
Chekhov on Mondays, Pushkin Thursdays,
evenings spent in the library, dallying
with verb aspect; Tsvetaeva and Pasternak,
intoxicated by their lives'
trajectories, their poetry...

The college empties, melancholy
at this time of year; summer showers
polish windows where a patch of sky
appears, primrose lining stormy graphite
in translucent air. Descendants of the birds
I used to hear still call the witching hour's
shaman incantations as their antecedents did,
harking back to Pushkin's 'Gypsies',
trysts with danger, duels with death;
practising to be Zemfira, girl without a care...