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Poetry.
Song of the city
My brain is stiff with concrete
My limbs are rods of steel
My belly's stuffed with money
My soul was bought in a deal.
They poured metal through my arteries
They choked my lungs with lead
They churned my blood to plastic
They put murder in my head.
I'd a face like a map of the weather
Flesh that grew to the bone
But they tore my story out of my eyes
And turned my heart to stone.
Let me wind from my source like a river
Let me grow old like wheat from the grain
Let me hold out my arms like a natural tree
Let my children love me again.
Gareth Owen
Mid-term break
I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.
In the porch I met my father crying-
He had always taken funerals in his stride-
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.
The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand
And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble',
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand
In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.
Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,
Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.
A four foot box, a foot for every year.
Seamus Heaney
Son of Mine
(to Denis)
My son, your troubled eyes search mine,
Puzzled and hurt by colour line.
Your black skin as soft as velvet shine;
What can I tell you son of mine?
I could tell you of heartbreak, hatred blind,
I could tell you of crimes that shame mankind,
Of brutal wrong and deed malign,
Of rape and murder, son of mine;
But I'll tell instead of brave and fine
When lives of black and white entwine,
And men in brotherhood combine-
This I would tell you, son of mine.
Ooderoo of the tribe Noonuccal
The Dying Stockman
A strapping young stockman lay dying,
His saddle supporting his head;
His two mates around him were crying,
As he rose on his elbow and said:
Chorus
'Wrap me up with my stockwhip and blanket,
And bury me deep down below,
Where the dingoes and crow can't molest me,
In the shade where the coolibahs grow.'
'Oh! had I the flight of the bronzewing,
Far o'er the plains would I fly,
Straight to land of my childhood,
And there I would lay down and die.'
'Then cut down a couple of saplings,
Place one at my head and my toe,
Crave on them cross, stockwhip and saddle,
To show there's a stockman below.'
'Hark! there's the wail of a dingo,
Watchful and weird- I must go,
For it tolls the death-knell of the stockman
From the gloom of the scrub down below.
'There's tea in the battered old billy;
Place the pannikins out in a row,
And we'll drink to the next merry meeting,
In the place where all good fellows go.'
'And oft in the shades of the twilight,
When the soft winds are whispering low,
And the darkening shadows are falling,
Sometimes think of the stockman below.'
Anonymous
Listen Soldier
The time will come to use your gun:
You will kill a mother's son.
Virginia Casper
Truth
Sticks and stones may break my bones,
but words can also hurt me.
Stones and sticks break only skin,
while words are ghosts that haunt me.
Slant and curved the word-swords fall
to pierce and stick inside me.
Bats and bricks may ache through bones,
but words can mortify me.
Pain from words has left its scar
on mind and heart that's tender.
Cuts and bruises now have healed;
it's words that I remember.
Barrie Wade
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