Poems from
Scenes & Visions
by Michael Cope

Poetry

Rain
GHAAP
Scenes & Visions
Some Examples of
       Silence
for the time being
Crossing the Desert
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A Virtual Anthology
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The Children
For Albie Sachs

I don't really remember you, Albie
I was a kid, you were a long giant
with a soft voice,
you were exciting:
in a world of parents and fear
in a world where I looked out
from behind a chair that dad had made
from wood he found down on the beach.

It was a time of conversations held
when the children were not in the room
or were in bed asleep with the tall waves
outside below the small house

Now on the front page, caught
in the irreversible truth-drug of pain
a man falls into the dotted greys of print.
Onlookers still numbed with fire
see the blood wash out of him.

In the cafe behind the sweets
I read - this sign - your name returned.
Thirty years collapse into
the child who cannot fathom
the papers by the coffee on the floor.

And there's nothing more than the man spun down
in the fire of the killer's truth
on that front page. But I recall
upright comrades sin the living-room
brave ones with words and a love
of ordinary people. You were there.

Are our children safe? We sleep,
outside they thread the night with flame
play hopscotch on the rim of death.
Who will watch them in their sleep?
Who will stay the watcher's hand?

And we who are not children, who
will care for us where care is cold?
The murderers who rule the land
sow death and think they'll never reap,
plan privilege and theft and pain.

This is a time of conversations held
when the little ones are not in the room.
Urgent messages against the night
carry the shattering of bone and breath
to silence in dark houses.

From behind the chair my dad had made
of wood he scrounged along the beach;
in a world where I look out,
in a world of adults and fear,
you are inside the wave
with a soft voice.
I was a kid, you are a long giant
I don't really remember you, Albie.