always a welcome compliment, Andrew, a May I blog it? from you.
best from Max in Seattle
On Aug 5, 2015, at 16:42, Andrew Burke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Wow, that is a truly moving poem. Thanks, Max. May I blog it? I admire the
> man and yr weaving skills.
>
> Andrew
>
> On 6 August 2015 at 05:46, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Thanks, Doug, also Sheila and Patrick.
>>
>> About broadcasting of Parliament, Australia also began this ages ago,
>> and nowadays it’s also on TV!
>>
>> Last time I was in a Melbourne doctor’s waiting room, the sick and injured
>> were watching Question Time, enough to sicken and injure in itself…
>>
>> Max in Seattle
>>
>> On Aug 5, 2015, at 11:25, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>> Nicely caught, Max.He knew a thing or two, still worth thinking today,
>> I’d say (but hoisters to Parliament [is there such a staton?]today?).
>>>
>>> Doug
>>> On Aug 5, 2015, at 10:27 AM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Stan Cooper
>>>>
>>>> Next door when I was thirteen
>>>> Stan was the blind man in his shed
>>>> weaving baskets on his own.
>>>>
>>>> Suntanned back and chest, wiry arms,
>>>> he did his best for rows of beans,
>>>> potatoes, tomatoes - Look at these!
>>>>
>>>> turning them in horny fingers,
>>>> feeling for blight. Ripe! juicy!
>>>> Those damn white butterflies!
>>>>
>>>> He’d tap tap his way to the bus
>>>> twice a week maybe, visiting
>>>> mates at the Blind Institute;
>>>>
>>>> on the way back drank beer
>>>> in some dim pub or other -
>>>> everywhere was dim, he told me -
>>>>
>>>> fuelling a two-voice barney that night
>>>> with his sharp-eyed sharp-tongued wife.
>>>> He’d back off, to his dark shed, its roof
>>>>
>>>> strewn with spread sheaves of wicker-canes
>>>> delivered for him to moisten
>>>> and soften up there till weaving-time.
>>>>
>>>> The same van took away good baskets,
>>>> sources of pride but not much income.
>>>> His little brown bakelite radio
>>>>
>>>> wired to a shed-top aerial
>>>> was tuned loud to Parliament
>>>> in Wellington, good for him
>>>>
>>>> to abuse the Tories, grumble
>>>> at Labour’s ineffectiveness.
>>>> Don’t they remember the Thirties?!
>>>>
>>>> How can they trust the banks?!
>>>> Don’t they dare touch Social
>>>> Security! The Pacific’s just
>>>>
>>>> a pond now for the U.S. Navy.
>>>> They’ll want the Antarctic next.
>>>> Untravelled, unread, un-sighted,
>>>>
>>>> Stan had wide horizons, taught me
>>>> a thing or two - offered me weaving
>>>> lessons. Thanks, Stan, no thanks -
>>>>
>>>> his swearing (‘bloody bitch’) irked Mum.
>>>> I didn’t fancy horny work hands
>>>> or all the Parliamentary barneys.
>>>>
>>>> I’d go back to my books, Latin
>>>> for Today, New Zealand Our Country -
>>>> nothing there about banks.
>>>>
>>>> [Owairaka 1950; Seattle 2015]
>>>
>>> Douglas Barbour
>>> [log in to unmask]
>>>
>>> Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuation
>> 2 (UofAPress).
>>> Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
>>>
>>> Done in by creation itself.
>>>
>>> I mean the gods. Not us. Well us too.
>>> The gods moved into books. Who wrote the books?
>>> We wrote the books. In whose dream, then are we dreaming?
>>>
>>> Robert Kroetsch.
>>
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