En Francais
Il es une balancelle
In English
A swinging chair
Hung in the languid air
Shaded by the rustling oaks
And caressed
By a honeyed breeze
In to which
The birds twitter
So the mind
Is temperate
As the perfect afternoon
And thoughts
Are spaced
As the young apple
And the quince tree
In the orchard
And time
Is the lolling arm
Let loose
From a snooze
And the comfortable rocking,
Gently to and fro,
Dans le reve
De la balancelle.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Worse than hatred;
The blanking hand
Demises those blanked
And withheld acknowledgment
Disappears the subject of a self
As if it were a ghost
Of no magnitude or apparentcy.
A crime to be blanked
And yet also,
Crime in the one who blanks,
For the racist cauterises his own
Wholesome self in the violence
Of his denying
And lies as injured as his victim
In the victimhood of his division:
No longer seeing all the beautiful
Faces who are the whole of him.
Half his heart he disowns and cuts
From his being, settling in to the
Fraction of the self remaining,
So colourless and drained,
And denied of life’s real meaning
In the face of otherness rejected.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
distilledvoice 