1968 footage of Melbourne
Colour refreshed and details enhanced
Trams and American cars
Thrumming with people
A police officer takes off his pith helmet
Wipes his brow
No children, only adults
White men and women
Dashing about their day
A couple take a cruise on the Yarra
All of them dead now
All those cars gone, too
I guess some of those trams were preserved
Some of those buildings are still there
Isn’t that the nature of the city – to outlive people?
None of those people
Throngs of them
Are here now, bar very few.
The city goes on
More buildings rose
Towering over the streets full of people
The Shrine of Remembrance
I went there
Looked just the same in the 90s
Is this the nature of all cities,
Built throughout the millennia,
To continue functioning past the lives of their builders
Past our lives?
Cities may be the bones and the cartilage
But we are the pumping blood of life.