and their song, I knew I loved you before I met you. The stuff in the poem about angelic beings comes from a line in the song, ‘a thousand angels dance around you.’ The bit in italics is a mix of lyrics from other Savage Garden songs (The Animal Song, Truly Madly Deeply and Affirmation).
Savage Garden split up in 2001 and said they would never get back together. This poem is about what might happen if they did.
I knew I loved you before I met you
And what were the chances of that.
Meeting you, I mean,
here,
on the last leg of the Savage Garden reunion tour.
I’d say it was about as likely
as a thousand angelic beings,
with plum eyes,
and exquisite inflatable ears,
giving up the hot springs of heaven
to come and dance around our feet.
You ask me what my favourite Savage Garden song is.
I haven’t the heart to tell you
that over the years, I’ve barely given Savage Garden a second thought,
that I always found them a bit gooey,
slushy,
sickening even,
and that I’m only here because I won the ticket at a steam fair.
It was either this or a giant rubber duck.
The Animal Song I say, and you look pleased.
You talk.
Looking at the buttons on your shirt, I worry how my fingers,
which feel puffed with beer and half price sausages,
would cope with objects so delicate and irreplaceable.
I have unreal memories of running through the jungle,
careless and free,
to stand with you on a mountain,
and believe in love surviving death into eternity.
But when you tell me that you’ve been to every concert on the world tour,
from Sydney to Moscow,
I begin to worry that you might be a little unhinged.
It occurs to me, that for all I know,
you could be harbouring a whole host of bizarre religious beliefs
and unspent criminal convictions.
I have visions of our lives together,
you mooching around to a soundtrack of romantic ballads,
twitching at police sirens,
and building shrines to a succession of fraudulent low lifes
who have access to the intimate details of our marriage and bank account.
Driven over the edge by my refusal to attend church meetings,
you tell me that you’ve had it UP TO HERE,
and indicate, with a violent repetitive salute,
that from the middle of your forehead down,
you no longer wish to try and make things work.
‘It’s OK,’ you whisper, as I move sideways into the crowd. ‘This isn’t really my cup of tea either. I’m here with my friend Brenda. She’s a right sucker for this stuff.’
I’m not sure who hailed the taxi,
if your flip flops were lost when I carried you out of Wembley Stadium,
or into the hotel,
how Brenda felt about her travelling companion
vanishing like a flash of strobe lighting,
or the precise moment I felt your fingers discover my spine,
groove by groove,
and dust my bones from their million year grave.
But when you lifted my hand,
and pressed it against the perfect sphere of your heart,
I saw a clear snapshot of heaven,
of a thousand angelic beings bursting back through the wrought iron gates,
rubbing their plum eyes,
inflating their exquisite ears,
and jumping into bubbling hot springs
for the sheer fun of it.
