7A Ascog Terrace
Toowong
In our half of the large old house
undergrads would congregate,
mostly devotees of Russian lang. & lit.
When they rehearsed performance scripts
Pushkin’s name was on their lips –
a long shadow of death by duel
that hovered over 7A
and stalked the headlong troika race
zigzagging through our days.
Two gentlewomen owned the property.
The stronger played croquet;
the thin one, staring-eyed, kept cats
that multiplied and multiplied.
Roses and a picket fence,
divided house, truncated lives.
One day the protective sister
tried to move her sibling’s bed,
burst a vessel in her brain
and slowly haemorrhaged to death.
Bittersweet Tsvetaeva became
the muse at 7A, where the common
currency was ardent youth’s audacity,
and sometimes elder scholars stayed
to drink and talk the night away.
You might remember those young
women; long-haired, idealistic men,
who sat you in their midst when you
were four and five – my student friends...
Remember when, at 7A, we lived
on cabbage soup and hope?
*
from the Book of Lost Addresses:
letters to Larisa