Ah, Patrick, Verna was a product of 1930s Auckland.
Left school at 14 and was lucky later to be accepted for nursing training.
1935 was the great year for Labour when her father was part of the first NZ Labour Government.
In colleges there would be May Day songs from the UK, and I learned some in Auckland in the 1950s.
There should have been more contact between trade union lefties and student lefties, but I think
they tended to be ignorant of each other.
Not enough marches and demonstrations compared with other countries.
The gentility of the Albyn Singers still seems pathetic when I consider what vital musics they ignored.
Max
On 05/12/2012, at 11:12 PM, Patrick McManus wrote:
> Hi Bill thanks for this re hard times for a socialist-I have a cassette
> called 'may day song book' celebrating may days 100 years -I believe from
> Melbourne -perhaps is Verna there ?
> Make you a copy
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Max Richards
> Sent: 05 December 2012 05:34
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: ' Aunt Verna and the Choir'
>
> Aunt Verna and the Choir
>
> Dear Verna, more than an aunt to me.
> Having only had a girl, how you
> mothered me, your only nephew.
>
> Life-long defiantly left-wing,
> defending Stalin till his death
> from his critics' 'sheer propaganda';
>
> distrusting everything American,
> 'big business', bankers, Ford cars.
> Your kitchen bounty was
>
> that of a generous socialist.
> Your garden, and uncle Basil's,
> touchingly private enterprise.
>
> Then there was your 'ladies choir'!
> How many annual recitals
> did my mother and I attend?
>
> (Father made some brazen excuse.
> Too musical to tolerate it,
> he'd be playing poker with mates.)
>
> Albyn! the name I just recall
> but not the woman whose choir it was.
> You were one of her faithful.
>
> In some small hall, unheated
> on a wintry night, clutching
> scarves to our throats, watching
>
> you and your friends lift up their chins
> and sing, their strained expressions,
> painful exposing of stretched necks,
>
> none longer than yours, Verna.
> I sense constriction in my throat
> just feeling the memory.
>
> Will no one tell me what you sang?
> Nothing too melodious,
> nothing too folksy,
>
> nothing like a Spiritual,
> nothing foreign,
> unless in bland translation.
>
> Rose-bud, rose-bud, rose-bud red?
> by the road-side
> some-some-thing.
>
> As Friend, other nights, of the Soviet
> Union, at movies like Potemkin,
> your faithful voice should have blended
>
> with the People's choir: Revolution!
|