Think of Silver

Issue 

Expensive spoons, some were
born with; also the word
itself sliding as smoothly off the tongue.
Then all the substitutes cheap but precious
reflected in eyeshine at Xmas toys, tinsel
sparklers, stars.

But hard glitter of mint-new silver dollars
were thirty pieces
and the other side of the shattered mirror
and underground hells
of sweated labourers, while
those unfortunates with empty dinner bowls
night after night on screen, stare
at that one final cloud
without a silver lining.

BY CONNIE FRAZER

From Green Left Weekly, May 22, 2002.
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