Lead in Literature
My Father's First Christmas
by Rae Desmond Jones, born
in Broken Hill in 1941.
My father's first Christmas
was in the year the Wright brothers
rose in their trembling kite
to burn gasoline scars across the sky
at Kittyhawk
when he was four the Titanic
plunged into the cold sea as the radio
bleeped out save our souls
but God didn't put on his headset
God slept deep while my father
played cricket in a dusty backyard
& the world dug into the dirt
as the lamps died over Europe & Empires
burned away like verey lights
when men came back without legs
my father waved a paper flag
& watched the way men hide fear
behind noble words & decided that
there were lies that he could not speak
when the gut dropped out of Wall street
my father walked to Adelaide with a sandwich
& sat in a park & watched strangers
in old army coats play silent chess
& ignore the cold
when the Japanese tapped at the door
my father stayed down in the mines where
he could not hear the screams above the indigestion
of the rumbling earth turning in a deep
discontented slumber
when men scrabbled at rocks
on the lovely white moon my father saw
the blue globe turn slowly
with nothing to hold It
by the time he knocked away the gas mask
& threw the final thrusts of his failing heart
against the metal of his deathbed
great jets were clotting the unclouded sky
& the diluted blue of my father's eyes denied
the arrogant detachment of his thought
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