Poetry by Pip Wilson

Page 10

All poems Copyright © 2001-now, Pip Wilson, Wilson’s Almanac

 

 

 

 

 

Vastlands of innocence (July 4, 2002)

 

 

In the vastlands of innocence,

Liberty and Justice

sang to a southland and we heard the call.

We are torn, we’re all born on the Fourth of July,

purple mountain majesty washed over all

Australia’s red rocks and her blue mountain pall.

 

O vastlands of innocence,

manifest destiny,

great people, just people, people just the same.

They pulled down their king for a trivial thing,

and raised up another who sullied their name.

O beautiful for spacious skies and Richard Nixon’s shame.

 

In the vastlands of innocence,

in the wide dreaming,

mansions of marble and motels of mud.

We marvel and wonder when we hear distant thunder,

will it bring rains of plenty, or does it speak flood?

Jefferson, Franklin, or movies of blood?

 

O the vastlands of innocence,

Swaggart and Leary,

they send us provisions at our own behest.

Marlboro and medicine, Manson and Edison,

they ship us their best but then ship us the rest.

O would that their captains would heed our request!

 

In the vastlands of innocence,

by the blue harbour,

‘W’ dared and he ventured to touch

on his favourite oration, The World’s Greatest Nation.

Sweet Jesus forgive him, he ain’t travelled much,

and vanity in vain, isn’t vanity as such.

 

The vastlands of innocence,

Fonzie and Whitman,

adored in dark theatres and the rockets’ red glare,

we never will hate them, condemn or berate them

and part of our hearts is in their love affair.

But we must implore that the rumours of war

will wither like whispers in yesterday’s air,

like the whimpers of babies, like Mary’s last prayer.
The blood-spangled banner of hunger’s unfurled --

let the vastlands still sing the Pursuits, for the World.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When a press gang found a volunteer, they were offered the "King's Shilling", a bounty for joining. Some men would join, get the bounty, then escape to do it all over again. Others would find a shilling slipped in their pocket and find someone saying that they had taken the King's Shilling and therefore were under contract to serve in the military. Others would find a shilling at the bottom of their tankard of ale and, since they were in procession of the King's shilling, they were in the military. This led some landlords to use glass bottom tankards.
Source

The king's shilling

 

There's a baby lying low in a hospital cot.

A field of yellow peasants in their scarlet gore.

The bones of the knights and the squires of yore

rattle 'neath the clover and forget-me-nots.

There's a soldier yielding life to the bayonet’s tip,

a tribe kneeling shaded by the hangman's knot

a bed where a man lies vacated in a lot

a grown man lying in a vice-like grip.

 

A grown man lying on a bed of steel

burning like your hands from a week's digging holes

freezing like your toes in a winter's cold

breathing hot and breathing cold and too burned to feel.

The sergeant presses in his hand the cursed king's shilling:

the grown man complains that he cannot steal

or buy or borrow courage, youth or zeal

for the force, elsewise he'd be willing.

 

There's a bed of steel beneath a fully-grown man

sucking him down and denying him rest;

the dignified crowd in the hall calls "The best

and the safest is to make your own plans".

But he cries out "Your reason is like a poor jest,

when plans are great boulders on unyielding hills:

I push, they roll back, my resistance is killed

and it's folly to start if I can't finish the test".

 

The sun comes shining in the black of the night

at the very same instant that the grown man sleeps.

He half dreams of sunrays warming his cheek,

but opening his eyes, he encounters no light.

All through the long night the crowd outside keeps

ringing and banging and chattering no sense,

"Take the king's shilling, dance your own dance,

into the bushland, man, into the streets!"

 

He dreamed of a king at the pyramid's base,

a throne at the lowest low seat in the land,

but his dreams are submerged in the black desert sand

of the night and the morning that darken his face

while the crowd chatters on in the spectators' stand

all the morning, the noon and the afternoon's length

into evening. And slowly he measures his strength

by lines and grey hairs, not by feet or hands.

 

 

 

Diamonds of great clarity
(a 60th wedding anniversary sonnet, for LS & FS)

The years have myriad facets: of moment, of eternity,
of history, and hopeful nights, and days of fears
when all reflective powers did strain to gather certainty.
We are women, we are men, our nature is to see and hear
symphonic lights and rise above mundanity and doubt.
Some rise further and more often, and inspire us with their light --
we marvel at the modesty with which they shine it out,
and, faithlessly, each time we wonder at the brevity of night.
  These facets are like windows into lives lived in prosperity
of spirit, or else in poverty of soul. But as we peer
inside our lives, the limit of our aspect always rears
its shadow; only friends can supplement the memory
of good folk, by praising for unceasing hospitality,
and love, kindness, strength, tenderness, fidelity and clarity.

 

 

Fox among the hens

She burned the night with fiery light
shining martian red electric blue.
there was little respite in the ocean night
from the pain or all that they knew.
"I’m only passing through,” he spoke
with an ill-concealed sigh.
A stranger spoke from a silver throat,
"You will surely be passed by.”

And the mist was cold
in the water glow
and the seven apparitions cried.  

“I was sitting on my laurels for too long a time”
Said he with a  faint insight,
but a stranger smiled triumphant joy
from the flesh of a weary night.
”You are lazy like a laden mule
and tired like a dying hound,”
Said the stranger, “I led you to the gates
but I won’t break them down.”

She watched her man
pounce among the hens
like a fox with a coat of brown.

They both were choosing and seldom losing
for the heart is strong and true,
And the soul, of course, is not enforced,
and the will shall ever renew.
But strangers are known with contention’s bone
to haughtily cut through.

In the miles between
the king and queen
were pictures hid from view.

“Why won’t you look?” she asked, and he shook
as the stranger shrank away
to the sound of a boy who said “Let’s enjoy
and the pictures will pass like the day.”
The stranger called from a concrete wall,
”Has he felt?” and she said, “Yes he has!”
The boy said “So’s she!” and the black of the sea
sank into infinite space.

The moonlight was cool
on the galloping mule
and the famishing fox ran away.

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