Ah but mustn't poets suffer, Max? And my penmanship (as they called it) is awful, though I was always more or less right handed...
You nicely catch that desire for revenge, unfulfilled...
Doug
On 2013-08-27, at 7:08 PM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Cack-Handed
>
> If you were born after me
> and born left-handed,
> you write no doubt
>
> left-handed. I, wartime
> child, was shifted
> from left to right.
>
> My poor brain, rewired
> roughly between
> VE and VJ Days.
>
> Was it the emergency?
> Peter Fraser's
> New Zealand Labour
>
> King George the Sixth
> and Mr Churchill
> all wanted me
>
> right-handed right then.
> No, in that era
> of strict discipline,
>
> I blame Omata School, Miss
> Giddy, infant mistress, Arthur,
> my head-teacher father!
>
> Well, I obliged,
> like a good pupil.
> To this I assign
>
> my life-long twisted
> character, my
> being cack-handed.
>
> I look it up:
> 'awkward, from
> cack = excrement -
>
> makes a mess'.
> Isn't that me?
> writing badly
>
> with my right,
> kicking left-
> footed badly.
>
> And so on. Last
> to be chosen
> in the playground
>
> when team captains
> picked up. Sent
> to a boundary to field
>
> where no ball fell.
> That sport I retired from
> at thirteen, much relieved.
>
> Only on the school
> rifle-range did
> I score - Bull's-eye!
>
> balanced on elbows,
> squinting, briefly in
> equilibrium.
>
> Southpaw I might
> have been, had I
> nerved myself
>
> for the annual school
> boxing tournament.
> From a safe distance
>
> with clenched fists
> I watched gloves
> make blood spurt
>
> from school-fellows' noses.
> Mentally sparring
> I punished rivals
>
> and enemies
> without their knowing.
> Or, drafted, pen in fist,
>
> killing insults
> for hated masters
> in my crabbed hand.
>
> Double-crossed,
> my twisted world would
> never be put to rights.
Douglas Barbour
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Art is always the replacing of indifference by attention.
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