Peter Porter, “Eat Early Earthapples”

There were boys at my Prep. School my own age
And three stone heavier, who made fifty pounds
Over the holidays selling kangaroo hides
They’d skinned and pegged out themselves
On their fathers’ stations. Many shaved, several
Slept with the maids – one I remember
Running his hand up the Irish maid’s leg
At breakfast not ten feet away
From the Headmaster’s enormous armature of head.
Then there were those marathon journeys home
In the train for the holidays, without sleepers,
And the carriages full of Glennie and Fairholme
Girls sitting up all night – some crying
In the lavatory, some sipping sweet sherry
From dark label-less bottles passed them in the dark,
Some knowing what to do and spattered
By Queensland Railways’ coal dust trying
To do it on the floor, their black lisle
Stockings changed for wartime rayon. There were
So many ways of losing a troublesome innocence
But so many ways of keeping it too. Being troubled,
I found a sophistication which drove me mad
Sitting out dances, a viewed humiliation,
Walking through waltzes on boracic’d floors,
(Chopped horsehair rising, said to make girls sexy).
The girls were nicer than I needed, the Headmaster
Led the Jolly Miller, the knowing athletes
Waited for the Gypsy Tap, their stories next day
Full of what they’d managed on the dark verandah.
My schooldays when I was so eagerly unhappy
Have me back among them when I sleep
Freely associating with those baffled fears.
The lascivious miler, the confident three-quarter
Are thick men now with kids and problems.
There is no way back into their wormy Eden,
Ripe with girls, esplanaded with sex,
To stuff myself to sickness and forget
(Taking their chances, my old wounds averted)
The boy with something wrong reading a book
While the smut-skeined train goes homeward
Carrying the practised to the sensual city.

Peter Porter, 1930-2017 – “Eat Early Earthapples” from The Rest of the Flight: Selected Poems