Canadian Poetry 1920 to 1960 by Brian Trehearne

Author:Brian Trehearne [Trehearne, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7710-8633-5
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2010-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

WORKING CLASS

We have heard no nightingales singing

in cool, dim lanes, where evening

comes like a procession through the aisles at passion-tide,

filling the church with quiet prayer dressed in white.

We have known no hills where sea-winds sweep up thyme perfume,

and crush it against our nostrils, as we stand by hump-backed trees.

We have felt no willow leaves pluck

us timidly as we pass on slack rivers;

a kiss, and a stealing away, like a lover who dares no more.

For we are the walkers on pavement,

10

who go grey-faced and given-up through the rain;

with our twice turned collars crinkled,

and the patches bunched coarsely in our crotches.

They have gashed the lands with cities,

and gone away afraid when the wounds turned blue.

Beauty has crept into the shelves of squat buildings,

to stare out strangely at us from the pages of Keats,

and the wan and wishful Georgian leaves.

These are our birthright, smoke and angry steel,

and long stern rows of stone, and wheels.

20

We are left with the churches, the red-necked men who eat oysters,

and stand up to talk at us in the approved manner.

We are left with the politicians who think poorly of us,

and who stand back with chaos in their pale old eyes

whimpering, “That is not what we wanted. No,

it was not to have gone that way.”

They are very old, but we have been very ill,

and cannot yet send them away.

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