Walking Mount Ainslie early, with transistor,
Mozart – divine duet from Don Giovanni,
resonant baritone, fluting Scots soprano,
persuasive rogue, the charmed distressful maid.
Magpies heard, open-beaked.
Three kangaroos, grey eminences, rose
staring, paws crossed, with worried faces fixed,
casing the intruder.
The tallest seemed to say,
‘Is this some ghostly forebear
with warning from our dim ancestral past?’
The second peered, indignant, ‘What’s that noise?
Is that what they call music?’
The third paused, poised for flight, scratched, and turned back
torn between curiosity and alarm:
shall I go, shall I stay?
With the third I felt vibrations of rapport –
the pain of inescapable decision.
He would have understood Hamlet’s predicament.