Happiness
Is gentle
As one sunlit sparrow,
Two crumbs, three chirpings.
(June,
1973)
Boy
Toppy Connell out at play
Is finding out the dull-heart way;
Toppy Connell couldn’t know
His mother’s fall would blow by blow
Be redressed upon his back
Though it isn’t very black.
Stretch this child upon the rack.
Fostered now. In
care. Put out.
Stretch him, tear him, make him shout.
That Children’s Home prize from his heart,
Wrench and rake clutched peace apart;
When he whimpers in his bed
Whisper through his woolly head
Everything the children said.
Stinkin’ n_, bloody black,
Fry your face and don’t come back.
Yellow belly, pipe your eye -
Golly couldn’t hurt a fly.
Shovel off and wash your mug
In the bog and pull the plug.
Toppy Connell pinches things,
He has horns and we have wings;
Toppy Connell hides by lies
Jerking fears from judging eyes.
Toppy Connell doesn’t share.
Toppy’s mean. His
heart is bare.
Toppy, Toppy dies in Care.
Someone, someone darkish brown,
Prejudice drummed him from town.
He like Toppy didn’t fit,
Wiped his face from gobs of spit,
Had a hopeful foster dad
Jesus Christ, were you as bad?
Stinkin’ n_, bloody black,
Fry your face and don’t come back.
Yellow belly, pipe your eye -
Golly couldn’t hurt a fly.
Shovel off and wash your mug
In the bog and pull the plug.
Allelulia
(June,
1973)
Keeper's Gibbet
Rows of paper, parchment corpses,
Stinking, verminous, condemned,
Dragging down the string frayed out
Between two trees.
He bent and lifted up a crow’s skull
In a brown, exploring hand.
Him dead, he said, and threw it down.
Yes, there’s his tearing beak, the holes for eyes,
The structure of his life.
Why man kill him?
Because he tried to live as best he might,
Eating and taking according to his need.
Because he’s the wrong colour.
The wood is full, stuffed
With game birds, pampered, fed,
Artificially preserved.
He died that they might live
Safely, a little longer
In the shrinking wood.
Soon it will be the open season.
(June,
1973)
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