Gig Ryan: The Swimmer Retires

Gig Ryan

Gig Ryan was born in Melbourne in 1956. She has published six collections of poetry: The Division of Anger (1981); Manners of an Astronaut (1984); The Last Interior (1986); Excavation (1990); Pure and Applied (1998), which won the Victorian Premier’s Award for Poetry; and Heroic Money (2001). The poems selected here are from her two most recent collections. Ryan is also a song-writer, freelance reviewer, and since 1998, poetry editor of the Melbourne Age.

The swimmer retires

While I read through the old records
the city builds outside. There’s no texture
to the stale ribbon. Medals press on your casket
Over winter, I swam through each brief dawn
polish the useless talent
in the carved water
All honours wash away
               He falls through the mist of reporters
               veered from a dream
               — a jewelled car that magnets round a coast

The pool unsheathed from me
The lanes unlock
as tallied seconds clang out each rubbed line
The hand on heart’s forgotten anthem
and splashed cameras
turn from the blue aisles
A king a servant thankfully going