Working Girls

She said she came from Portland Where the ashen skies and leaden ocean Left her like the local boys, barren of emotion As we talked we watched the raindrops Running down the window Laundromat in Darlinghurst, Like a fish shop from the past. And her mother called her Mary After Mary Magdalene, To deny her beauty Would have been the greatest sin It was a profile in the neon and a Kings Cross Doorway lean To half an hour of tending someone else's tangled dream. There were lines of sailors, lines of speed Lines upon the Footpath where she stared When things were quiet, as night deferred to dawn. And the coke cups played red rover In the breeze that scuttled through the streets Taxies left for greener fields While Sydney stretched and yawned And her mother called her Mary After Mary Magdalene, There were virgins in the morning, She had sisters in the pain; And the wives would clutch their husbands Perhaps they shared the shame, 'Cause working streets and Weddingrings are sometimes much the same. She tap-danced with the buskers Near the subway shouting blues songs They remembered from their teenage years of dreamtime radio. And the years withdrew behind her eyes To let the little girl look out In simple childish innocence At drawings in the sand. And her mother called her Mary After Mary Magdalene, She had long dark hair and massage oil And a key to let you in; And the lines upon her face were maps of roads she'd travelled, Lined with people throwing stones because they didn't understand, That a half an hour of tenderness (perhaps they shared the same) 'Cause working streets and Weddingrings are sometimes much the same.