She said she came Portland Where the ashen and leaden ocean Left her like the local boys, of emotion As we talked we the raindrops Running the window in Darlinghurst, Like a fish from the past.
And her mother her Mary Mary Magdalene, To deny her Would have been the sin It was a profile in the and a Kings Cross Doorway lean To half an hour of someone else's tangled dream.
There were lines of sailors, of speed Lines upon the Footpath where she When things were quiet, as deferred to dawn. And the cups played red rover In the breeze that scuttled through the Taxies left for fields While Sydney and yawned
And her mother called her After Magdalene, were virgins in the morning, She had sisters in the And the wives would their husbands Perhaps they the shame, 'cause working streets and Weddingrings are much the same.
She tap-danced the buskers the subway shouting blues songs They remembered from their teenage of dreamtime radio. And the years withdrew behind her To let the little girl out In childish innocence At in the sand.
And her mother her Mary After Magdalene, She had long dark and massage oil And a key to let you in; And the lines upon her face were maps of roads travelled, Lined people throwing stones because they didn't understand, That a half an of tenderness (perhaps they shared the same) working streets and Weddingrings are sometimes much the same.