Boys
... Listening to Karaindrou: Eternity and A Day
In Singapore, Australia and Jakarta, worlds fall apart, everyone is looking for an escape, and nothing will be the same again. Exploring possibility and desire, yearning and identity, We Rose Up Slowly is the debut collection of short stories by Jon Gresham. Buy We Rose Up Slowly on line here.
Enough of that blatant self promotion. Here is a poem:
I
I see the boys of summer in their ruin
Lay the gold tithings barren,
Setting no store by harvest, freeze the soils;
There in their heat the winter floods
Of frozen loves they fetch their girls,
And drown the cargoed apples in their tides.
These boys of light are curdlers in their folly,
Sour the boiling honey;
The jacks of frost they finger in the hives;
There in the sun the frigid threads
Of doubt and dark they feed their nerves;
The signal moon is zero in their voids.
I see the summer children in their mothers
Split up the brawned womb’s weathers,
Divide the night and day with fairy thumbs;
There in the deep with quartered shades
Of sun and moon they paint their dams
As sunlight paints the shelling of their heads.
I see that from these boys shall men of nothing
Stature by seedy shifting,
Or lame the air with leaping from its heats;
There from their hearts the dogdayed pulse
Of love and light bursts in their throats.
O see the pulse of summer in the ice.
II
But seasons must be challenged or they totter
Into a chiming quarter
Where, punctual as death, we ring the stars;
There, in his night, the black-tongued bells
The sleepy man of winter pulls,
Nor blows back moon-and-midnight as she blows.
We are the dark derniers let us summon
Death from a summer woman,
A muscling life from lovers in their cramp
From the fair dead who flush the sea
The bright-eyed worm on Davy’s lamp
And from the planted womb the man of straw.
We summer boys in this four-winded spinning,
Green of the seaweeds’ iron,
Hold up the noisy sea and drop her birds,
Pick the world’s ball of wave and froth
To choke the deserts with her tides,
And comb the county gardens for a wreath.
In spring we cross our foreheads with the holly,
Heigh ho the blood and berry,
And nail the merry squires to the trees;
Here love’s damp muscle dries and dies
Here break a kiss in no love’s quarry,
O see the poles of promise in the boys.
III
I see you boys of summer in your ruin.
Man in his maggot’s barren.
And boys are full and foreign to the pouch.
I am the man your father was.
We are the sons of flint and pitch.
O see the poles are kissing as they cross.
Dylan Thomas, 1914 - 1953
Boys, Dandre & Ijad (Kontrakan Bu Tomo rumahnya) not Udin & Mamat, Jakarta Selatan, April 2014
Over 60 days later, the question remains who killed Reza Barati? The Australian Government hopes you'll forget & move on.
PNG Nationals Attacked Asylum Seekers On Manus Island, SMH, 21 April 2014
"… footage clearly shows security guards throwing stones and other objects at asylum seekers seeking refuge in a room after being chased back into the centre by the guards.
Fairfax Media has also obtained images that show how the fence at the compound was pushed in by PNG nationals who entered the centre, allegedly enraged by offensive chants by asylum seekers.
They also show bullet holes within the complex at "stomach" level, challenging the assertion that the only shots fired were warning shots in the air; and they show damage to an asylum seeker’s door from a machete as asylum seekers say they were hiding inside."
Just Because The News Moves On, Let's Not Forget Manus Island, Michelle Grattan, 24 April 2014
"A young man has died and the Australian government obviously carries a share of responsibility.
It is about time it stopped hiding behind the numerous inquiries and provided some answers. It could start by putting out the Cornall interim report."
