the interview to study librarianship at Melbourne University, 1977

 

Decided – or been decided, luckily it was 1977

so any decision was free, contextually.

Favourite shirt, white cotton, four buttons

to the neck, overly large, unflappably flappy –

it was even clean, jeans, basically

in 1977 it was always jeans.

 

Enter formal entrance, footsteps echo

on floors a thousand feet have traversed

before two huge doors, wooden, designed

to intimidate, worked, says a lot about

doors passed and thresholds still to cross,

a sign – interviews this way arrow demands

the right, dutifully followed,

encounter four students hardly older

seated, erectly, behind a large table,

table adorned with a white table cloth –

 

it matched the shirt except whiter

newer, suited to that room

and time. “Sit,” sat,

interview began – blame the voice

not its timbre, its deep, beautiful resonance,

a bassoon of a voice – its ability

to locate specifically

in that room, on that chair.

Voice, hair too, long, obviously washed,

overly so, combed to perfection –

not theirs, allowed to just be, hanging

loose, they had no attention

to details to worry about, speak…

the chair moves further and further away

an interrogation in long shot – reverse zoom,

table, corridor – two double doors, outside;

 

‘thank you, we’ll let you know,’

already did, contrast of voice, of hair,

the large staring portraits understood

everything in that room knew – the room itself,

especially in 1977, University

may have been free but entry never was.