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Kenneth Slessor - Metempsychosis
Work rating: Low

SUDDENLY to become John Benbow, walking down William Street 
 With a tin trunk and a five-pound note, looking for a place to eat, 
 And a peajacket the colour of a shark`s behind 
 That a Jew might buy in the morning. . . . 
 To fry potatoes (God save us!) if you feel inclined, 
 Or to kiss the landlady`s daughter, and no one mind, 
 In a peel-papered bedroom with a whistling jet 
 And a picture of the Holy Virgin. . . . 
 Wake in a shaggy bale of blankets with a fished-up cigarette, 
 Picking over the "Turfbird`s Tattle" for a Saturday morning bet, 
 With a bottle in the wardrobe easy to reach 
 And a blast of onions from the landing. . . . 
 Tattooed with foreign ladies` tokens, a heart and dagger each, 
 In places that make the delicate female inquirer screech, 
 And over a chest smoky with gunpowder-blue— 
 Behold!—a mermaid piping through a coach-horn! 
 Banjo-playing, firing off guns, and other momentous things to do, 
 Such as blowing through peashooters at hawkers to improve the view— 
 Suddenly paid-off and forgotten in Woolloomooloo. . . . 
 Suddenly to become John Benbow. . . .
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