'

'... they would hold their little hands through the wire ...'

"... they would hold their

little hands through the wire

and tell them who they were,

who their mothers were,

where they'd come from ..."


bin ends of a language

dusty resting in the hereness-

and-nowness

eyes cried back and sightless

from infinity, not transparent

to its edges

the country beyond the compound

working its sympathetic magic

as real as cold

without the pretence of life

given stone warmed by the sun


and the children shiver

through bodies untouched

by stiff white smocks

through dreams uninvaded

by the faded bodies

of the newcomers


make no comment on

the bibles, the hot tea,

the irremissible "punishments" which

would separate them from their

impressions in this land


make no movement beneath

the hurled down words of their captors

whose net is tight

too tight for reminiscing the future

(when the children were born

their parents were already

caught in it, inheritance

is not possible through them)


but the land waits

full of desire, like the sun

wants the sky, for these children


whose little hands

reach through the wire

whose small hands know how to heal

the disbelief built strong like this prison


on the country

MTC Cronin

[Opening lines in italics those of Vi Stanton in Kevin Gilbert's Living Black.]

From GLW issue 239