TWO YEARS LATER, TUB.

 

It has been a long time, Tub

Since we’ve talked together

We should have done something then, Tub,

for it is happening now over again

There was the nation’s policeman

Who said the world was not so safe

But he backed completely off

When the politicians told him what to say.

And the General of the Army

who agreed with the politicians

Yet a million of us ordinary people,

Believed it to be the other way

WMD have come and gone

This time the intelligence services

with names like DIO and ASIO,

ASIS and Pinocchio

Where nobody knows who told what to who

He has won control in the voting, Tub.

So expect it to get much worse

‘ll be easier now to take people’s jobs

and throw them on the street,

in the name of a god called Growth.

I told you before it was time in jail

For speaking out too loud

Dead still we stopped that one then Tub.

But it will come up again now soon,

And the possibility does really exist,

that I might get it too.

My family too has gone its own ways, too

We told you we were worried then,

And now it is more than two years later,

Two sadder people.

That is the world, Tub

ON A BOAT

            

Boats, magic in themselves

Pushing into the wind

Lee awash, much sail up

A joy rare to experience.

Wandering down the bay

Wings a–gulled,

Every square of sail spread out

Easy for you; a lazy time.

Wind and rain screaming

across the boat. Wet through;

Eyes squinted tight, barely seeing

A little apprehensive.

At a mooring on the bay,

Friends, pleasant times

Sun streaming, sails tied

Other boats around.

Overnight, further up the coast

A strange harbour,

Raining, the hatch leaks,

No sleep; but secure at anchor

The joy of it all,

Out to sea

Fair weather, cloudless sky

Following winds, coming home.

EXPECTATIONS

Expectations placed on me seem all too high

So on us is placed a great and difficult load

And I think at times that they are far too heavy.

But deeply to you they never last

It has been this way over all my years

Asking more of me than I am, can ever be,

Is it my fault ? for I do not always try

Treading a path undemanding but unaware

Is it, has it been, always like this?

It surely has been for me,

Are we those who wander unthinking

Asking little, giving less, from the beginning of time?

Perhaps I try to meet that demand

I think I do, But I follow a path that does not ask,

Nothing. Nor does it create an asking

Rolling; seeking happiness, one or two, never expecting

And your regrets are always there

Readily given; too readily, for they are the deep you

I say it; But they do paper over

any a deepening crack, for I know you mean them .

THE MORE WE SAY

Words, we are told,

are the setting

of ourselves apart. They

are the reason why

we have conquered our distant past.

I have met many people

who talk well.

Some a lot,

Some eloquently.

Some exactly, precisely, knowingly.

But still an inadequate skill.

For in our hearts, inside our souls

the depth of our thoughts,

our lives, our loves, our hopes

are, inexplicable, impenetrable.

If we do not know ourselves

we cannot  understand

why deeply we search….what

our unknown depths

are truly saying.

And if we know not ourselves,

we cannot speak to others.

Nor can we understand

what they have cried out to us

Now and for years past.

Are they empty, wasted cries?

Never to be answered.

Or will the day come,

that day of awakening,

when we will understand?

PRAYER

Pray for the refugees, dad, she told me,

when I told her where I was going just then .

Many with a much greater need, I replied,             

For there is famine, great terror, and talk of war 

Pray for the world, we said, Lord hear my prayer             

But no-one I am sure, was listening

SAMOA

Storm on an island in a black-grey ocean

Rain drumming incessantly on a tin roof,

Drowning conscious thought

The noise of rain and trees conquers all.

Morning at last;

Emerging sun, broken trees,

flooded pathways, leaves

An island, green and awakening, emerging.

An isle of magic beauty,

Set in a blue-blue ocean

The land of Tusitala

The teller of tales

A land of vivid history

A speck on a wide blue ocean,

Traded among the great powers

Over wars set far from its shores,

Its people were traded too

In a history of their own.

Plus explorers and pirates,

Traders and missionaries.

Aggie Grey and Robert Louis

Bully Hayes and the bible society

All have left their mark

On this green and verdant land

All are there, a society of chiefs;

in the churches on Sunday,

on customs so strange,

In this beautiful island in a blue-blue ocean

Where from the edge

You can see tomorrow.

STREET CAFES

I sit in a sidewalk café

(There are not enough in this city)

a busy street – many rush by

within their own worlds

and the worlds of those with them

who share their time.

All different – every one.

Brown, white, faces, bodies

Every one

a person to themselves.

distinct and separate.

We know that now.

I watch them - some rush,

Some laugh, not hurried

I think about them

Some interesting – others not.

The short Chinese woman

wobbling a little

following her husband;

cannot keep up.

A young girl, midriff showing

An older woman - a flower person

of decades long past. Still trying.

Not interesting.

The traffic –noisily struggling.

A truck with a painted sign

for a cause. I try to read,

but it is gone, behind many others.

A woman with a stroller,

That baby will grow

to become a person

different from every other.

A man in a suit

A woman – well dressed

Why is it, that at such a moment, more women than men

still turn my head?

There are many of us.

Is what they see in me,

if they see me at all,

different from

   what I see in them?

We are all distinct.

So must we also think differently

– each one of us?

Is what they think

different  for every one?

Yet they all - we all – are asked to think

this way or the opposite.

black against white

on a hundred different issues.

For it or against it,

With us or against us.

With all-too-few a grey,

Although the world is a thousand thoughts,

and a thousand different colours.

 

THE FIRST TIME

A magic moment it is

And certainly it should be

for all of us.

That first full encounter

With love, and exploration

and new bodies. You would need

to be floating, to tell it all.

They were.

The first story

about the number nine bus

Not that it happened there.

It was the going home after

Top front seat. Both hands,

cupping  a crotch,

quietly singing to itself.

The second was hilarious

on the sands by the estuary

when the tide came in

and the car floated away

at the moment of magic .

And after, he was quite sure

that there had been only half a first time,

Or perhaps only a quarter.

Rozzie’s story was the best , however,

for Rozzie had a broken leg.

In plaster – top to toe,

And they only had the sofa.

The others in the flat,

Were asleep. They hoped.

The time had come,

She knew that. He knew it too.

He had been there,

the day she broke her leg.

Too many fumblings since,

On the sofa, in the car, the park outside.

The both knew it.

Her leg was the only problem.

He propped it this way,

She propped it that

Nothing worked well

But much patience and some care,

and finally an achievement came.

Of a sort.

The last was not fun

In the long undergrowth

prickly and damp

Much time but no patience, no warmth.

She laughs now, but two years went by,

before trying again.

Many years later

they told their stories.

Four of the six. Two

would not tell.

And for none of the four

Was it truly a moment of magic.

But we had grown in the years since

For now we could laugh

at that broken moment of magic.

The first of the many

 that follow us all.

The answer lay in the jigsaw puzzle

What sort of sentence is that

Which sounds like Dutch to you or your cat

But you try to combine

In syllables at least nine

A sentence that rhymes with puzzle

And the one only word is guzzle

As well you have the problem

Along with jigsaw it’ll fog em

THE GERIATRIC CLASSROOMS

[With apologies to Tang Man Lan and others of her age]

Arthritics anonymous they called us

But we are not anonymous at all

For you can hear the creaking joints

At least half a mile away.

It is all a wonderful adventure

For we have showed the world how we are

Men and women, sleeping side by side

With common showers

And unlocked, and unlockable, doors

Mind, it is not all that unsafe,

For the fires of youth are a little dimmed

And if not, the creaking floorboards,

Or the arthritic joints

Give ample warning

of nocturnal adventuring.

There are of course the writers

Who within a week will master the novel,

with plots, openings, endings, short stories,

and several varieties of poetry thrown in.

The landscape painters are the heroes,

For off they go in 30 degree heat

Painting the central plains in washed out browns

And coming back with burnt out reds and pinks

But triumphantly having captured on a canvas

the wonders of our western countryside

The doubtful lot are the sculptors

Women of a wonderful age and presence,

With one of the few men amongst them

Being I hear of not a dissimilar age

taking off his clothes each day.

I cannot help but marvel, that the fingers

and the object that they are modeling

have a hundred years between them.

The unknown quantity are the printmakers

With their lino cuts and printers ink.

It is they we need to investigate

For it seems they started late

And there just maybe a chance,

That it was they who started the rumours

Of the anonymous arthritics at class.

My house.

Some people live in a fish bowl,

Others in glass houses.

I live in a washing machine

Not one that goes round and round

But one that goes up and down,

Somewhat like a yo-yo. 

(No title)

Black or white. Theirs or ours. Choose only one.

Creating conflict, and always one who wins.

A world diverges, different, each is just one.

A man and a woman diverge. One, the other.

But life is not grey. The search is eternal.

NEW YORK

Life is full of surprises, places, people

Upstate, summer, on the lake,

the people from 82^nd. street

a cottage, timbered, at water’s edge,

unbelievably quiet.

Not that far, a pub, all invitation, local noise,

we drive, a half-hour, too far to walk,

the small village, a  boat repairer, two shops,

sold everything. Like my childhood.

So quiet, remote, far removed yet so near

to a city that defies gravity, huge, confronting,

A city that is America, loved and hated,

brass knuckles, noisy, ambitious,

A city of universities, bookstores, theatre.

hamburger joints and Chinese laundries.

A city where unreachable minds, unreadable people,

created ground zero.

Often we think that it could only be there

that we could watch a building disintegrate

while so many people die.

It may have places of quiet dignity,

there maybe an old world charm,

But we see do not see this beauty

and rarely realize its charm.

We see instead downtown canyons

that never see the sun

yellow cabs and rushing people

speaking in a hundred different voices

The world is there; It is a city like no other.

It is the future for all others.

NELSON MANDELA

Out of darkness comes a man

with the best and worst of us within him,

A man who rebelled with arms and explosive

As his only path to justice.

What today do we call the man

who fights that way for freedom in his land?

Twenty six years of his life it cost him,

With months in solitary confinement,

And years of breaking rock.

a cell of stark nothingness,

The brutality, the invasion, the denial,

of letters, of contact with those who love and care.

From it emerged one above us all,

That we, good, bad, and so ordinary,

could never be. And for most

would never wish to be.

A man who has a thousand reasons

to hate more than most. A man who struggled

and won with those who had hated him.

The world has a need for such a man.

Nelson Mandela was a man struggling for freedom for his people, but sent to jail as a terrorist. Yet he could forgive. He must be regarded as a great moral leader.

My virtual reality

Found at last an office

in that dirty unknown town

Just a desk in fact. One in an arc of desks

a half circle in a green brown field .

A messy desk, a scattered litter

so moved to an empty one

a few desks further on the arc,

A stranger came to share, a rough one

I don’t know why he was there

But I don’t know why I was either.

I was sealing an envelope, torn at one end

Couldn’t find  new envelopes

between us each with half messed desks,

Went back to the old desk, but none were there,

so tried to seal it with dirty tape,

which stuck to my fingers, 

knotted like a tangled fishing line

sticking to me, the envelope, itself

The envelop wouldn’t seal.

Looked for new tape,

my desk sharer had put  it in his bag

along with a dozen

empty sticky tape reels

A shout from a desk across the field

The dog playing happily

by a small muddy patch

Was pulling himself out

covered in mud

left side hanging, leg dragging behind

He looked to me. piteously

His leg was slit long , I could see inside , to the bone

I cradled him close

Where, where could I find help for him

In this unknown and dirty town ?

My world suddenly became half dark,

It had not been a good that night

The envelope was gone; the dog was OK

My virtual existence

had become real

SLEEPING ALONE

I sleep alone
it's great

Room for you stuff on the dressing table.
keys, the torch, all the  books

and  papers that still
have to be read

She complains
No cuddling she says

No hot sticky bodies
shoving you out of bed

say I
No blanket wars

No sleeping to another's rules
Can wake at 2. Or 3. Or 4.

Read for an hour.
Without an earful of complaints

And if you want a bit,
of you know what.

You can always
make an appointment.

MY MISTRESS’ EYES

The Spencerian counter attack,
     after Edmund Spencer
against William Shakespeare.

My mistress’ eyes shine for all the world to see

And long a-glowing are her lips of ruby gold

Her lovely breasts enticing solely me

And hair so beauteous black in long drape and fold.

I have seen roses immersed in red and white,

Such as the roses constantly in her smile

And in no perfume do I find more delight

Than in the looks with which she doth me beguile,

I so love her voice and well do know

That there is no music a more wondrous sound

And although any Goddess can only but flow,

Each step of my mistress floats o’er the ground

With no other I know she can compare

And that by heaven my love is so rare.

------------------------------------

Shakespear’s sonnet 130

A very unkind sonnet to a mistress,

Attacking the Spencerian sonnet

If hairs be wires, black wires grew on her head

And in some perfumes there is more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music has afar more pleasing sound

My Last Day

Steve Jobs has asked himself 

If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?

For most of my days 

I have not done what I would do if I  were at my last day

For on my last day, I would want to hug and kiss each and all those dear to me,

 and then say a loving goodbye

and go to the verandah at my mountain house to die,  

But if I did that, I would achieve near to nothing,,

Yet I would have given many hugs and kisses

and hopefully received some back

So I would like you, and all my loved ones

to treat me as though each day

was my last.

Amended 2010 

My Country

Today. I cannot understand

I try to forgive

the country of my birth

Of my early years

I was grown, with family,

When we accepted

that there were other people.

Other colours. Other races.

That we lived among them.

I can never accept

That the first act of my new country was

to exclude them.

There were people here when we came

We, my people, my fathers, my forebears,

Killed them.

Women, men. Like us.

As this century moves on I come to know,

How different I have become

My country’s past is not now

one which I am proud to know

There was another country.

I knew it not

I was taught its history long

I knew it better than my own.

Today, I read  history of my own

I find

That we fought that country’s wars

Our young men died for them.

And that we gloried in that obeisance

That unwillingness to be ourselves

I cannot understand, I cannot forgive

Those who taught me thus

But I am proud. I am proud of those young men

of courage, of a depth so often called on.

And the vast expanse of green and brown.

Its people all, just as strong,

as those young men.

Yet still today. I seek,

To find those we ask to lead ,

touching with the same knuckle

as did my fathers and father forebears.

This I cannot understand. 

My Cat proves Nothing

Or

What David Morris told me

That an elephant has four knees

Where the rest of the world has two

So I yelled for the cat/dog to come

And sure enough it is true.

But my dog is just one of many

So I tried to find the cat

And a bird, I’m sure hasn’t any

Then  David complained  about knees

And  said I should pay him fees

MY BROTHER

 

My brother doesn’t write poetry.

All he does is worry

about his business.

And his money.

And make life gruff

for all of us he loves

His children, his wife

My children, and me.

Tho’ he’s not too difficult

For buried there deep

beneath  a  well–hidden soul

and his barnacles galore                                                     

is a kind-hearted man

who will come to your rescue

provided you ask

more than ten days before.

He’ll loan you a quid

Or even a few hundred

And for the kids

It need never come back

The help  is free,

Slow to emerge

And in need of checking,

But there, always there.

Written in 2002

MOUNTAINS AND THE MIST

 

Today is a day for writing.

And walking.

The leaves all wet, the trees

a hundred different types surround

disappearing into an ever thickening mist.

Those near, tall, climbing ever upwards

to a sky of grey, dripping damp

then fading into a far nothingness

and the hills you know behind them.

The birds are quiet on a day as this

Yesterday full of sunshine,

they laughed, chattered, a thousand songs

you believe of joy and happiness

Today, in the mist, a few short calls,

Most are quiet.

A walk today is a different pleasure,

little to see, but a day with a deep deep soul

down the path, through the sky-climbing trees,

enveloped in a cool damp greenness,

closed in your own small world.

Out at the cliff’s edge,

high and spectacular still

The valley is buried, the hills the other side,

no longer there. The sun far gone

It is a world primeval,

engraving itself on you.

You welcome this return to yourself,

But deep within are very glad,

No longer is all primitive man

Today should books, a fire,

 a desk to write.

MNEMOSYNE

A river, a dam,

An English dam they said.

Welsh water for the English,

But I was from a far distant land.

Above all a woman,

A girl and a woman,

from the town nearby,

Tom’s daughter.

She tried to teach me

where my soul belonged,

what it is to be me.

to love and be loved. Not easy.

We joined, stayed,

for long years,

Traveled much

as people of my land do.

Many lands, oceans separate.

Many differences.

Always, always, She came with me.

But we were different

Logic and emotion

Are not

everlasting companions.

In the years since

they have found a name for those

whose logic

demands compliance.

She left.

I have traveled alone

Many new lands,

But finally I came back

To the river, the dam, the little town.

I rang her own,

That unpronounceable name

They talked to her,

and to me, said no.

I came again

More years later

The dam, the river, all much smaller.

The house, the hotel,

She was gone.

Cardiff maybe?

But nobody knew.

I searched in vain

for that unpronounceable name.

And all I have now

is a memory.

Revised, February, 2005

MAX

Just two or a bit.
Near total joy.

The words we all use.

A warm and willing smile,

outstretched arms, his,

reaching out to us. Irresistible.

Love, infinitesimal, immeasurable,

his without asking.

The legacy of us all,

is also his.

The overriding self,

the “Mine!”, “Mine!”,

the unbelievable tantrum,

the instant demand. Unsatisfiable.

They are also his, from aeons past.

Lasting  an eternity,

tho’ sometimes only seconds

then the Max of much love

returns again.

The years will pass,

G’andi will go.

The love, the lessons,

will never cease

from two people

with infinite care and patience.

And Max will join the adult world

Thinking. More careful with words,

“Mine”  “Mine” long gone.

Not perfect, we never are,

but now

ready to pass on lessons of his own.

Read at  XXI World Congress of Poets, Sydney, 2001

JOY

A dog wondering, head tilted

Sun on grass, filling windows

A boy, just five, constant movement,

Smiling, laughter, sister too

A woman, big breasted, loving

Life, a fullness, total joy.

Purpose, work, small successes,

Little measures, goodness

Always trying, searching, filling

Winning, just a little now,

Maybe, one day, full success.

Life, a fullness, total joy.

Humorous they said

Humorous they said!      Impossible!

How can we make jokes about ships and the sea?

Glorious history ; the seven seas

Cook, Nelson, and all , Heroic. Not humorous

And Admiral Byng, for failing to engage the French

in March of ‘57, in magnificent ceremony,

shot on the deck of the Monarch,

riding at anchor in Portsmouth harbour

He was George , but there was John Byng and Richard

Admirals all, and pubs and schools and historical societies,

named after one or the other

Even as cowards, they’re famous, not humorous.

And one’s own adventures to tell,

Perhaps not across all seven

But heroically across channels, straits and rivers

around  the four corners of the globe.

Courtesy of a job with forever travel

First attempt on Acapulco Bay

Learning the ropes in San Francisco

Crossing the channel dead in the night.

Inspired by Hornblower,  Aubrey and all

Heroes who could both fight and sail

The first engagement was a hired boat,

Across the bay, with an admiring one ashore

I know not how Nelson learned to sail

But it was not by hired boat

For this one  flipped, and with me on top

started slowly drifting out to sea.

He came out when my hour was up.

The admiring one had gone to sleep,

But since then I have sailed the world,

never again astride a turned-over  boat.

Adventures galore, hours on smelly rivers

The Yumna into the Ganges

And the poisonous Potomac too

But sailing always the right way up.

Navigational  feats without number

Frobisher in the North West passage

Bligh  4000 miles in open boat

Me across the channel

La Manche; the channel at night

Rough it was ,dark, all of us a-heaving

Correcting for the sweep of tides

France on the horizon in dim light finally.

Which way Deauville?  he asks ,

Port I reply, surely half right

Frobisher must have made some guesses
Ours were just as wrong as his, 

But we at least came back.

All night. Exhausted. Next day into the pond

Tripping face first on the mooring rope

Woken at last  to the nurse’s thermometer

Frobisher didn’t have to face it like that.

Then came the first of seven

The Tasman, oh a wicked sea

Chichester around the world capsized

Only in this beast of a sea.

We tried last year, Dave and me,

Along with  Dave’s light at the time

But she got sick not far from shore

So that day we thought was not for us.

Tried once more again last month

Cautious of Chichester’s sea

Forecast after forecast , but finally the day

that was smooth & safe for Dave and for me.

So safe in fact that wind it died

And we did not sail the first of our seas

But now the boat up there sits, waiting for

the day they forecast winds the other way.

And in the meantime we sit and dream.

Of Anson round the Horn,

Drake on the Spanish Main

Or me on my second sea.

He apologised for the awkwardness of his wings

Awkwardness is a word

Of a type that I’ve often heard

Its like the word mosquiter

Not easy to match the meter

Nor do you have the time

To make the damn word rhyme

And worst when set in an exercise

To use the word apologise

                        ooo

There was a  drake called Dings

Who apologised for the size of his wings,

Every time that

He went to bat

On a duck by the name of Linglings

For their length was such

That he couldn’t do much

Although he often tried

To take a long ride

Using his wings as a sort of a crutch

For if you ever have been

Where a duck and a drake aren’t seen

Doing what they shouldn’t oughta

And that’s trying it out in the water

You’d see why Lings was never too keen

And the reason is that

He would go very flat

As his wings would drag

And cause him to sag

Somewhat like a drowning rat

And whenever they try

On the beach to lie

After he had taught her

To get out of the water

His wing on Ling was as high as the sky

So for a good duck’s sake,

If you’re  a drake on the make

The lesson for each -  don’t try on the beach                    

To get her peach is too long a reach.

Is it you Melbourne?

Is it you Melbourne?

Or is it me?

HORATIO, FRANCIS, AND ME

 

Humorous they want it to be. Impossible when we write of boats and the sea,

For we think of Drake, and Nelson, Frobisher, Cook and others in their mould

Heroes, every one. People who fought and voyaged, travelled and explored,

to the far corners of our world. Nothing to laugh at there.

The humour, of course, is really  me, brought up on these heroes, 

nurtured into adult life  - Hornblower, much later - Jack Aubrey,

The boy, now man, round the horn with Anson, sailed the main with Drake

and across the oceans  with Slocum. An envious boy and man, year after year.

It started with dad’s half cabin – you know half cabins. They’re the wooden boats

with a cough-cough engine…..ones that will never start…with a big flywheel,

A few still scattered around the back bays of this town. But it is an impossible task

to learn to sail in a boat  running on a cough-cough engine.

And then a job with constant travel confined the seven seas and the world of sail,

to views  from 30, 000 feet and late night reads in many hotel rooms

But at last came the time, the dream - courted, joined, and honeymooned

on Acapulco Bay. And on the beach was a man who rented a boat to sail.

Now I don’t know how Nelson learned his ropes,

or how Drake crossed the Spanish Main

But it wasn’t in their dad’s half cabin. Nor in a rented sailboat.

For you know that the wind provides the power, but you are far from sure just how,

So after you sail across the bay, and turn to go back again,

You find that a sail boat does what cough- coughs would never do,

Years later and familiar with the wind in its many varied ways,

 still you cannot remember how you tipped it   upside down

All you remember is struggling on an upturned boat, drifting slowly out to sea,

Nor had you learned, nor did need to learn, how to get right way up again.

The newly beloved is fast asleep, and the open sea is closing fast.

But the rental man comes out, although not before your hour is up.

And as he slowly tows you back, still astride the upturned boat, you see the hundreds watching you from the shore, agreeing that you are not a Nelson yet.

Sailing school on San Francisco Bay. Not the part all you see, but down the bay,

smelly and mud-flatted, but enough to start the adventures galore,

Rivers, and bays, lakes and channels, and hopefully one day at sea.

From the Jumna off the Ganges, the poisonous Potomac to blue Pacific atolls.

And never one of them was ever sailed astride an upturned boat.

The navigational feats without number: Franklin in the North West Passage

Magellan first round the Horn, Bligh 4000 miles of open boat

But I regret that I have to tell you, they cannot compare

with the feats in my years of sail

  

The channel at night is dark and rough,

With all of us a-heaving. Me the navigator

Dead reckoning, correcting the sweep of tides.

France on the horizon in dim light finally.

Which way Deauville? he asks Port I reply; quite sure that I

had  be at least half right. And in any case, Nelson, Drake,

all must have made some guesses.

Even Franklin up by the Pole. Although we at least came back

We sailed the remainder of the night, but finally had to turn about

That afternoon into port, exhausted, tripping face first over the mooring line,

Waking next day to a French thermometer. Horatio never had to face France that way.

And I began to realise my adventures were not of the Nelson kind.

But at last came the first of seven seas - the Tasman, a wicked sea

Chichester around the world capsized only in this sea.

We tried last year, Dave and me, along with Dave’s delight at that time

But she got sick not far from shore. That day was not to be for us.

Tried once more again last month, cautious of Chichester’s sea

Forecast after forecast, but came finally the day

that was smooth and  safe for Dave and me.

So safe in fact that wind it died. We motored the first of our seas.

But now the boat up there is waiting until they forecast winds back our way

And in the meantime we sit and dream.

Of Anson round the Horn. Francis Drake on the Spanish Main.

Or me on my second sea.

In BoatingOZ.com.au

HAVE YOU WONDERED?

You have wondered, I am sure,

from times quite recent to our distant past

why we have wrought great cruelty

on others of our kind.

From Charlemagne and the Saxons

to Cromwell with the Irish,

and not that long ago,

the Germans with the Jews.

That the victims were somewhat different

even portrayed as not quite human,

was the reason that no-one argued

against their imprisonment or their slaughter.

Today we can read the propaganda,

watch the newsreels of that time. We would 

still be very sure that we would not

have condemned the different ones called Jews.

Yet they who sent their neighbours to the camps,

were people who had loved and laughed,

who had worked and cried; and came

from families like yours and mine.

Were we not the same when most of us approved

of locking men and women, children,

outsiders every one,

into camps with wire in many layers,

patrolled by guards and guns?

Were we not the same when we believed

that there were terrorists among them;

that they threw their children overboard,

and our leaders called them monsters.

Were we not the same? we believed

our navy and our leaders

Yet we did not wonder - no photos were allowed

or why the those who knew did not speak

Did we not believe when told they were the wealthy

that the poor and deserving still wait in queue?

Although a meeting with just one of them

would tell us  that this is far from true.

We might hope we are different to nations in the past.

That justice and compassion are values deep ingrained.

But our nation did believe, and we did condemn,

those that did not belong. We are just the same.

Published in Open Boat, Barbed Wire Sky.  Live Poets Press, 2003