The Beatles In Adelaide, by Geoffrey Dutton

Give way, square city named for a dull, dead queen,
Bulge like the trousered bottoms of squealing sixteen.
Sag like their sweaters, elegant old verandah
Of the hotel where Schnabel or Menuhin once were seen
And whispered on by black-tied and jewelled guests at dinner.
‘We want Paul!’ ‘We love George!’, from the marble
Steps and columns of Parliament House, where the gargle
Of politicians spat out lengthier platitudes.
O level-headed city of ornate feuds
No knife will settle, unscarred by bomb or machine-gun,
Make room for your first Revolution .
In your straight streets the barricades are out tonight;
The horses of the police could be the colour of fright.
O city of parks below the Founder’s bronze finger
Ordering the plains between the hills and sea,
Rock to the clap of hot hands and the tears of hysteria.
But already, sidling behind the hotel into Hindley Street
The idols (with a ring-in drummer) are vanishing into cars.

The night pulsates with amplified guitars
As if someone had just plugged in the electric stars
And given the hymning firmament a new bold beat.
Inside the Centennial Hall, where in summer cold feet
Shuffled under the silent islands of exam desks
The girders are heaving like lovers, and the whole floor
Bounds under boots and the voices screaming ‘More!’
The neat grey figures with their medieval hair
Strum and shout to themselves in the focussed glare;
Perhaps they cannot even hear themselves
For they twitch like wound-up dolls on remote shelves
While the audience is performing, shrilling on ear-drums,
Clapping, while into some favoured ones there comes
The stiffening rapture, saints seeing glory unafraid.
And it is a mystery, by what presence they are swayed
Like great flocks of birds that suddenly wheel
As one, to let fly together one screaming squeal
That makes the thousands one. One in four,
Who exit (in flesh only) to the frenzied ‘More!’

A few ancients in their forties there, remembering that war
Is first declared in unconditional surrender,
See shiveringly through the hot idol-incense the tender
Youth of Germany, once rigid with such ecstasy.
But these are nice kids in another city.
‘God Save The Queen’ cuts all their screaming short.
They stand to attention. It was not as rough as sport.
No one was hurt. No Adelaide policeman’s corns
Would tolerate a jackboot. The cry is ‘Love’. The horns
Of cars could never turn to bugles. They stand,
Still humming ‘I only want to hold your hand.’
But say, to a steady beat of drum and guitar,
Paul, Ringo, John and George all shouted ‘War’,
Or ‘Kill’, or ‘Bomb’, or ‘Rape’, or ‘March’, or ‘Hate’,
What one of us, or them, would know our fate?

Just a note on this poem, I’ve known of it because it was in my high school poetry text (a LONG time ago), and it comes from a collection Poems Soft and Loud published in 1967. The last stanza has always been problematic for me. He tries to disguise an obvious-looking simile equating Fascist rallies and Beatlemania, and then tries to suggest that their power could be used for evil. He clearly fears this power and does not understand it, and portrays it as a kind of revolutionary fervour, as if a popular group doing so would be accepted in the same way as a popular dictator would! It’s weirder when you think about it, for one, the source of authority doesn’t match. And intriguingly when you think of the social revolutions occurring at the time, it seems like he’s making a veiled comment about all the things that are changing, yet it might have had more force later on during the Vietnam moratorium marches in Australia in the early 1970’s, except the slogans yet again don’t match. So you’re left with the strong impression of someone forced to confront a social reality via a remarkable event (half of Adelaide went to just wave hi at them in the street!), and years later publish a little screed about those weird Beatles, what if they were revolutionaries huh huh?! Such critiques aren’t unique but it’s certainly different to see it in a poem that the author was happy to publish! The big hint is the line A few ancients in their forties there…. In 1967, Dutton was 45.