The Knowing Gaze
(A memory for MSP)


Sue, do you remember on one cold Canberra day
in July some years ago during one of those dreary
literary conferences how tedium could be measured
between the hours of parallel lectures and tea-breaks?
When even if you told the audience present that week
that you could walk on water they’d still ask for only
your point of view? Till of course in that one finest hour
a Greek Cypriot began his paper by actually stripping down
to demonstrate the belly dance of his cherished homeland
and, not only our minds, our sleepy senses were aroused.
Don’t you remember our spontaneous hand-clapping,
some of the audience stuffing money down his pantaloons,
his wink of the eye at us, that rich wriggle of the waist —
and on our giggling faces was finally an academic joy renewed?


___________________________________________
This poem is fortunately autobiographical. I came upon the poem when Sue reminded me (over some delicious mutton curry) about the belly dance at a literary conference in 2001.