John Stanton Davis Mellick

Poems

The Jurors In the square they sit like an extended jury

on separate seats, mute, autumned, each a book of yesterdays. The unaware stream by locked in docks
peculiar pressing petals and fragrance into an unheeding pavement.

In the sun they sit, age dumb and grey, watching, seeing only last year’s petals last years leaves.

Till The Next Time When you have pressed your last handkerchief, placed its edges lip to lip rearranged
the drawer, smoothed, patted tidied, and put it in its place do you wonder what happened to the
wrinkles?

Sunborn of water midwifed by the wind, somewhere they lie kink straightened and flat – till the next
time.

Mellick. Poems 14

Le Simplegadi

Vol. XIV-No. 16 November 2016 ISSN 1824-5226

DOI: 10.17456/SIMPLE-38

The Way Home

(For VCM) A Davis she was as was your mother and gently brushed your hair and I entering knew that
this was your time of going, as slow as dawn coming.

Me you leave softly your last breath your goodbye and that long wrestle to make meaning in a brown
land for a dark-haired man under the Crown far from the green fields of Drumadoan and the cobbled
streets of Derry has ceased.

It was my duty, you said, and though I would have I would not hold you for your way of going was your
way home.

Jsd Mellick is a retired senior English lecturer, University of Queensland. His publications include: A
Centennial History of the Pharmaceutical Society of Queensland (1980); The Passing Guest, A Life of
Henry Kingsley (1982); The Portable Henry Kingsley (1982); editor with Patrick Morgan & Paul Eggert,
the Academy of the Humanities edition, The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn (1996); associate editor,
The Oxford Literary Guide to Australia (1987); Writers’ Footprints, A Literary Guide to Queensland
(2010). His poetry has appeared in U.S.A. and Australian journals. jsdmell@gmail.com

Mellick. Poems 15
Another Day in Kolkata

Chances are she’ll lose the dream settle for fast growing metro links, high sky rises. Knight Riders fan the
tempo, the fire of Bangla poems doubles the impact with cigarette in hands, high thoughts Marx to
Ambedkar, Neruda to Tagore designed to impress sweet college girls scribble and gobble wordy
rosogolla and sweet curd, expressions everywhere. In time, she wins the day. Drinks mouthful political
poems, Not in My Name. A memory of oozing silence, slow rain.

The Trusted Army

(for Manohar Mouli Biswas, Bangla Dalit writer and activist)

If you need a band of active peace Army, I bet for poets. Poets give law of the land and the seas. Poets
are humanists, who break walls

In silence. Sign peace accord With owners of law rulers of the code. Frontiers of several environmental
zones.

I bet for them. Give them a job. They will pay you back.

In words, words and volumes of words for peace of the land and mind.

I bet for them.

They can give us a green earth of values and morals poets shake hands with green grammars of the land.

I bet for them.

They usher hopes for tomorrow, beyond all doubts and uncertainties. They are formidable forces of all
nations. They keep guns alive.
Slogans ready: your name, my name, their name: poets!

We cross corridors of haziness mistrust and exploitation. They write.

They are busy. For all seasons.

Long Live kings! Power of poems!

Alienation

HI my conscience! Touch me, take me, and control me Awaken me, broaden me, and enlighten me You
say, did you ever love a Sudra in life?

Did you eat with him happily, with heart’s content? You tell me, I want to know it from your mouth.

HI Swami Vivekananda, I’m at your door, knowing and knowing.

I’m that fire ball who made you cry.

Rice cooked in my house

I eat near the broken door, in a slum

I eat pork, snake, rat, half cooked

Had you ever been there? I’m tempted to know that.

I suffer from a disease, alienation.

All humanitarians, please tell me

You have never put me on the edge.

Prove that you loved me without any doubt. I have been suffering from a disease – alienation

I’m tired of pangs of friendly separation.

Let me accept my end with this angst and pains of separation Kill all evils. Let me be part of everyman,
united.

HI God, you are all powerful

It’s my cry at your feet to heal my broken mind.

Oneness

Someone told me near the river Koshi

In the northern slopes of the Himalayas

To plant a tree

A door of high thoughts.

I embraced simple minds,

Crafted stories between the stars.

Sublime thoughts live; they travel far.

My boat is ready to move, after a spell When failures, little backslidings rained In the summer draught.

Each stone scripted stories

Of the Hills

Lifeline murmurs its recorded silence.

When I pass through a busy street. Somewhere.

My mind connects with a sovereign nation.

My friends remind me how they are connected

With my Sindhu land. They visit the holy basin By walking pass Vistula

When unknown birds twitter.

Heavy hearts cry for their families.

Rivers watch courtship of clouds,

Channel thoughtful minds; life moves fast.

Roots of civil societies

Rice deep understandings.

All bridges are doors

From separate homes, beyond this wood All hearts are red.

The earth is enjoyed by riding heroes.

What cuckoo will coo

My prayers in murmuring rhymes?

Jaydeep Sarangi is Principal at New Alipore College (affiliated to the University of Calcutta) and a widely
anthologised poet with six collections in English. His recent publications include: Faithfully, I Wait (2017).
At present, he is the Secretary of Intercultural Poetry and Performance Library in Kolkata.
Apirana Taylor

Poems

south west Taranaki

where the wild wind whips your ears and
hauls away at your scarf where
driftwood lies strewn on black sand like
stranded whales where the rocks bathe
like beached seals in pools of dying light
where night falls, one minute after midday shadows reach
out from the foot of sentient cliffs where red veins bleed
down the tear ducts of whakapapa1the creeks charge
heedlessly to the ocean where waves froth and smash
themselves on the shore
where the under tow washes you away
forever speaks the mana2 of
Turuturumokai

Pohutukawa3

untoppled by the storm the

roots of the Pohutukawa
spread wide and delve deep
the summer blossoms are
red as blood
the trunk is gnarled and weather worn
like an old man the branches give
shelter from the burning sun when the
bulldozers chain snapped trying to
uproot the mighty one
Vol. XV-No. 16 November 2016

and succeeded

1
Turuturu Mokai is an ancient Maori fortified village known as a Pa. There was a great battle here.
2 Whakapapa is ancestry; mana means power, prestige.
3 New Zealand coastal evergreen tree (Metrosideros excels).
only after it’s third attempt
something more than just a tree was
lost, torn and uprooted from the
earths heart

Ruamoko
i rage in the molten
heart of this earth i
shake the mountains
i drive tsunami
across sea i smash
your mighty cities i
am Ruamoko4

rank
where once the mighty
totora5grew, the rimu the
ngaio and puka, now stands
rank upon rank like soldiers
an army of pines amassed in
the valley and on the hill
soon the man will fell King
Pinus Radiata leaving a deep
gouge on Papatuanuku6

Apirana Taylor is a nationally and internationally published Maori poet, storyteller, playwright,
novelist, actor, painter and musician. He was 1996 ‘Writer in Residence’ at Massey University and
2002 ‘Writer in Residence’ at Canterbury University. His poetry and short stories, are studied in
secondary schools (for NCEA Levels 1 and 2) polytechnics and universities, and have been
translated into German, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian and Russian. He has twice been invited to
India to read his poetry, and is frequently invited to Europe Vol. XV-No. 16 November 2016

4
The Maori god of earthquakes and volcanoes.
5 Totora (Podocarpus totara), rimu (Dacrydium cupressinum), ngaio (Myoporum laetum) and puka (Meryta sinclairii)
are evergreen trees endemic to the forest of New Zealand.
6 In Maori tradition she is the mother earth figure.
to tour and read his work at festivals, schools and universities. In 2012 he was invited to South
America to present his work at the Medillen International Poetry festival in Meddilen, Colombia.
He has written several books of poetry and short stories, a novel, and several plays, and won awards
for his poetry and short stories. His work has also been published in most major New Zealand
anthologies, and broadcast on radio and television. Apirana visits schools, prisons, libraries,
universities, and tertiary institutions, doing poetry performances, storytelling and taking creative
writing workshops. haka@paradise.net.nz