COMING UP FOR AIR

9 R C O M I N G U P F O R A I R S T E P H E N E D G A R Like that recurrent dream In which a world of rain begins to pour And drown the house, to stream Through windows, down the walls and, inches deep, Spill out across the floor, Daylight already, as we woke from sleep, Was rising, liquefied By heat and, lapping wall and window pane, Starting to seep inside. We screened the garden in a desperate sortie, Watching the sun ordain Its record-scorning peak of more than forty, Then rushed to barricade The house with drawn blinds from the ever higher Degrees of centigrade, In which, one fancied, the perverse intent To breathe might well require Adapting to an alien element. Out in the city’s west We seemed deep on the seabed of the heat, Which bending fathoms pressed To airless temperatures, while in the east We’d surface to the sweet Sea breezes of the coast, our lungs released. And there we went: that night, Dinner with friends, perched in their top-floor eyrie, Watching the sky recite 1 0 Y The sun’s late lessons in the clouds and preach Its pyrotechnic theory Over the revelers on Coogee Beach. Now we could breathe at last. And now the southerly came at us, smack, With an exultant blast, Chucking the plastic furniture about And rushing to attack The living room through open doors, to clout The dining table, scatter The napkins, snatch o√ posters from the wall, Play havoc with a platter Of antipasto. Rollicked in the seethe And racket of the squall, We gulped great lungfuls down. Now we could breathe. ...