River of Money - The Go-Betweens

It is neither fair nor reasonable to expect sadness

To confine itself to it’s causes.

Like a river in flood

When it subsides and the drowned bodies of Animals have been deposited in the treetops, there is Another kind of damage that takes place beyond the torrent

At first, it seemed as though she had only left

The room to go into the garden and had been delayed by stray

Chickens in the corn.

Then he had thought she might

Have eloped with the rodeo-boy from the neighbouring

Property but it wasn’t till one afternoon, when he Had heard guitar playing coming from her room and

Had rushed upstairs to confront her and had seen

That it was only the wind in the curtains brushing

Against the open strings, that he finally knew she

Wasn’t coming back.

He had dealt with the deluge alright

But the watermark of her leaving was still quite visible

He had resorted to the compass then, thinking that

Geography might rescue him but after one week in the

Victorian Alps he came back north, realising that snow which

He had never seen before, was only frozen water

I’ll take you to Hollywood

I’ll take you to Mexico

I’ll take you anywhere the

River of Money flows

I’ll take you to Hollywood

I’ll take you to Mexico

I’ll take you anywhere the

River of Money flows

But was it really possible for him to cope with the

Magnitude of her absence?

The snow had failed him

Bottles had almost emptied themselves without effect

The television, a samaritan during other tribulations, had

Been repossessed.

She had left her travelling clock

Though thinking it incapable of funcitioning in Another time-zone;

so the long vacant days of expensive sunlight

Were filled with the sound of her minutes, with the measuring of Her hours