poem | Gus Goswell

G20 GEOMETRY

Exhibition Street riot police create
negative space: quadrilaterals of war
forged by foot soldiers and the horse.
If you choose to interfere with our advance,
break through this cordon, or assist another
fool to do so we’ll arrest you.

Understanding the persuasiveness of
space rightly configured, their
perimeter is powered along parallel lines.
Yes it’s the newest tessera, dark blue
and quivering, in this city that’s as tiny
as the sum of its silent squares.

Their draughtsmanship values are that
of those who dreamt and drew Melbourne’s
formerly well-ordered geometric/metaphysic.
They’d claim to understand our streets as well
but yet I hear that they fired up together
watching footage of Genoa.

Riffing the art of displacement while
outnumbered many times, protesters
are divided at a former intersection.
Still, I’d say our cause was advanced
not a little by the disproportionate response
of those geometers of order.

© Gus Goswell

Overland 186–autumn 2007, p.66