Domestic
abuse can happen anywhere in the world at any time. More often than not family
members and/or friends and/or neighbours and/or teachers and/or work colleagues
may have suspicions. It is not a subject on which anyone should remain silent
for fear of being wrong. Better to be proven wrong than let a wrong continue
and say nothing, surely…?
Domestic abuse is not uncommon in any society; men, women, children, it can happen to anyone. Yet, the same people that will protest about environmental and Human Rights abuses will often remain silent about domestic abuse. Where is the logic in that and what excuses can there be? Yes, well, plenty of excuses; even love - to its everlasting shame - is one of the masks perpetrators of domestic abuse often wear.
VICTIMS
Brightness
falling from the sky
like
summer rain, makes flowers grow,
the world
shine like rainbow trout
on a
school kid's line at a local stream
who
should be in the football team,
but his
dad's beat him black and blue
where
ma's laid out on the kitchen floor,
can't take any more
Brightness
falling from the sky
like acid
rain, making the trees cry
as leaves
die like fishes in the sea,
collector
specimens neatly laid out
under
glass for generations to see
how dead things appear to suggest
how dead things appear to suggest
a history
of human deprivation for want
of a better education
of a better education
Shadows,
like corpses on the grass;
skylark,
a near forgotten sound at a spot
where
revelations in the clay suggest
a
once-busy stream in a world earmarked
for the
winning team, the rest of us
neatly
laid out under corporate glass,
(preserved
for a new century, a new class)
victims
of abuse
Copyright
R. N. Taber 2000; 2016
[Note:
This poem has been slightly revised from an earlier version
that appears in 1st eds. of Love and Human Remains by
R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2001; revised ed. in e-format in preparation.]
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