Changing Places

Changing Places


The ancient feuds, renewed by hate,
Of warlords by the old renowned,
Have stripped the flesh from off the bones
of this young country, small and bare,
And naked now, on blood soaked soil,
I look up at the sky and scream.


This place I used to call my home
Is nothing now, or so it seems.

I call it “Where I live.”

But far through hill and under plain
green sea, or by a boat;
A better place, a land where hope,
Though hardly clear, is still not yet forgotten.


(A nation which the world can see,
And one which I am proud to be
part of,
Though sometimes I feel shame.)

My son is young, my daughter too,
The long hard journey on the back
of railroad car, and ’neath the crates
in back of lorries, no real space
to breathe,
was hard for them and for me too.

But now we reach the country far,
My first thought is of my mistake,
of leaving all my roots behind
And on arriving just to find
The country that I now was in
Was different from the one that I
Set out for.

Impossible to think at all,
as noise and fumes of London air,
Draw the gaze of dread despair
Upon me, but when I could think
I thought of all the things that I,
have had to leave behind.

But soon as years began to pass,
I slowly put away my past,
And as I grew in wealth I came
To see that life was better here,
The chance to learn about the world
Was given to my boy and girl,
Though never yet to me.


(The same and ancient love of life
Produced by their own sweat and tears,
Is mirrored by the stork which cuts
Her snowy breast with bitter beak,
And feeding on the blood that flows,
Her chicks, they will survive.
Some sacrifice there will always be,
In raising offspring, but did he
expect the cruel and bitter blow
This change in life would show.)

My children grow now far too quick,
And far apart our minds have split,
They have no thought of my home soil
Or my long years of sweat and toil
To support them.

They never now will be to me so near
As once they were through many yester-year,
No common ground ‘tween me and them,
the art of speech,
has now become,
almost,
Impossible.

(A sea of consciousness round you lies,
The memories of ancient tribes,
Run through you still and from the birth,
They form and stroke your brain.
But now that one who once imbibed
The water of a flowing stream,
Which, though poisoned by the years of war,
Was water still and had much truth within.
Contrast this with this father’s brood,
Who drank from oceans wide and full,
But never will be able to
Drink enough for their content,
Though maybe they can surf!

A gap of years, of many miles,
Extelligence of history,
Fought,
and sought,
to conquer
mind and Will.)

She is a doctor, and tends the lives
of the sick and dying.

I keep a small convenience store
and supply the local kids and brats
with sweets and booze and fags
to give her work.
She told me once about the lack of beds,
the lack of staff and the extra hours
she wanted to work.
But I asked her when she would
marry.


He is a software engineer, and tinkers with lines of code in another world.

I cannot care for computers.
For I do not see
that they care for me.

He told me once about the spiders web
of information, power. But I
am scared of the spiders,
lurking on the edges,
ready to pounce,
and the bloated Ungoliant
in the centre.

• • • • •


An ending of my story comes,
For my children are greater now than me,
And looking on I’m grateful for
The fact I got it right before.
They both have done much better here
Than any now that still are there,
The ancient borders drawn afresh
Twice or thrice since first I left.

And she told me that sometimes the old
of traditional values
would shrink from her loving
brown hand. And
Flinch from the tender touch of
brown skin.


And he told me the names he was called in the street,
and he told me again of the looks and the glances
Of stuffy, oversuited, sweating, business managers,
Who handled him with pincers
and laughed in their Private Club
and playing golf.

And I, I told them of the stones that
break the glass and the morning routine
of cleaning spit from car, wall
and door. And twice I cleaned some words
off from the wall. But I will not
speak them.



And everywhere they told me of my countrymen,
Further North, blooded by the same birth,
but embittered by this earth.
They kill,

“Let’s burn the streets, like the white man once burnt us.
We are burning still.”

And I am ashamed.

Ashamed of this place of my death to come,
and now ashamed at my place of birth.

• • • • •


And now the pangs of death draw near
and suddenly an inner fear
grips all my organs and my brain
starts feverishly the worried strain
of What if I could have been wrong?
When all along
I thought that I
was doing right.

Last gasps, what dying breath for me,
As now I must face up to the,
Dread curtain of my life’s short act,
As the flickering footman of eternity
Stands by to take my coat.


And as I die, my last faint plea
The only words I have for thee
and thee,
are very simply,
“I am sorry.”

(A flash up to the stars appears,
As freed at last from toil and strife
Of Earthly cares, he now can seek,
and look to find
The reason for the human mind.

But often reasonless it seems,
to those that still dwell in my dream,
No logician could explain
a reason for the bloody hate
That somewhere dwells within.)


The death of a decade.
The ending of an era.
The turn of centuries.

Moss decayed on ancient ruins
of Great St. Paul and Singing Dock…

…but will we ever change?