开心

It’s been years since

You were tall to strangers,

And you wore a black wig

So that a westerner’s notoriety

Could be deflected.

Years, and a short time

Set against a life,

But long and rich in a way

That I cannot provide you.

You still think occasionally

In the ordered wiring of your mind,

In fading Mandarin:

The tonal puzzles which seem to me

Breath and song.

You tell me that

Some things have to be translated back

Through the middle kingdom.

When I cannot say in English,

Or have not the words

To stop your tears

Or convince you of the worth

You doubt,

Perhaps I wait for Mandarin

To stamp an ideogram

Upon my tongue.

Damen O'Brien

Booval

Queensland

Australia

Men and Power

I wrote this whilst sitting in an isolated , riverside field of perfect peace in France with my African granddaughter asleep in the shade after reading ‘The Rape of Nanking ‘ by Iris Chang to a recording of Guo Yue’s haunting bamboo flute and wishing that the world to come can be somehow different from the world as has been. Although it might look like a poem , it’s not except insofar as superficially in that it seems to have shape and isn’t trying to cling onto the left hand margin. The fact that it seems to have an outline or a contour was due to the rhythmic effect of the music and the light playing upon the surface of the water.

How readily, men on heat descend into the bottomless pit

to rape and kill their brother’s wives and children ; the shame of it,

when given power ; just a bit.

When given power over death and life

He, this man, turns his eager hand to caress with care a well oiled gun or fine honed knife

and then forgets that he, in some distant place has also, a child like them

and like them , a wife

Yet no need at all to justify this manly urge to kill

A rationale of primeval fathers and born in lust with blood to spill

And ever insatiable and never once achieves its fill

He orders them with trembling hands to scrape in earth,

a shallow hole

In fear, to kneel with hands tied firm,

assuming then the assassin’s role

And there, as Cain, beneath the innocents he kills, he buries deep his only soul

As Faustus did though merely to portray some truth in dramatic effect lest an observing audience miss that little bit

And if God looks down, If God can, as some say, Know

The shame of it is that He doesn’t show the love that they say fills His eternal heart

as they, in a pointless, painful abandon, from the one life He gives them, depart

And if it’s true that His inaction is the worthy price of man’s freewill

Then let his prophets explain away the grief

to the mothers of the slain

and the tortured and the raped

that the price for choice in pain is well worth it

In a city ; Nanking

and a village ; Mi Lau

In a sea port; Salé

In a camp ; Dachau

In a field in Armenia

or in the Cambodian rain

In the hills of Croatia

On Rwanda ’s great plain

Or on the back streets of Bazra

Or in some Lebanese cell

Where the innocents suffer

In this practice for Hell

And now it’s in Mumbai

Where blood is released

Where more innocents die

And the murder’s not ceased

And hardly ever, the question;

How? or Why? or Where? or What’s it for?

The gates of Hades with a well greased door

hinges open with one fingered ease

And then much too late to fall down on your knees

But enter that place

Where souls are forfeit by men on heat

Eternal in regret

And the Devil shrugs in embarrassment

and wonders at the ease of it