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ARTS AND CULTURE

Resignation syndrome

  • 22 October 2018

 

Selected poems

 

exaltation against despair

and the world is a wobbly stool

and spindly trees grow to the light

against all the odds of walls and overcrowding

and where there's a tree in your heart

a singing bird will come

and we write of hope

with nothing to write

yet urgent to write it

 

 

resignation syndrome

this poem is a repeat

written over and over

a story told again and again

 

the one thing different it has a revised title

two words

 

'resignation'

meaning uncomplaining endurance of sorrow or other evil

 

'syndrome' — a set of concurrent symptoms.

 

the concurrent symptoms for this poem:

vague staring into mid air

take to their bed

not eating or drinking regularly

not toileting

not responding

 

imagine a child without light in their eyes

 

it is not a flash back

it is now

it is the Australian people

it is us the wealthy nation

wanting our cake and to eat it too

what a cliche

 

using humans as a deterrent

fearful of fear

 

how many times do we need to tell it?

how many times do we need to hear it ?

how many times

until our hands and legs unshuffle

until hearts fire

our country blaze again

 

until we can imagine the human faces

staring through the bars

until we see eyes

children eyes

come alive again

 

until we know

it is our fears

that stifle the light

 

we want to know

goodness prevailis over evil

 

humanity is a breath of us

we are all in it

one breath

 

we breathe each others air

we are the people attempting to breathe

 

we are suffocating

 

in depriving breath from one human

we hold it from ourselves

 

silence is the power

secrecy is the power

yet humanity demanding to breathe together

is enough

 

is the power

 

 

after the massacre

when we wake to truths

that make our hearts beat fast

and walk the blood-red gravel track

that draws us down

 

to write the story on our heart

needle on our skin

to pin our bones into its frame

and stand

 

with Milton's fear

of blindness and denial

 

then grope and touch

the blood-stained earth

with spines of ironbark

and smell the stench of burnt flesh

where only eucalypt should waft

 

we weep

 

grapple in the dark

find that so tender song-line of truth

stirs a nations womb to birth

and know

there is no going back

 

 

Colleen Keating is a Sydney poet. She has two published award- winning collections of poetry: A Call to Listen and Fire on Water. She is also co-editor of two anthologies on behalf oft the NSW Women Writers network.