Parade
Olivia Macassey

Pick up the stick pick up the stick pick
up the stick

pick up the stick. Pick up the stick pick
up the stick:

You picked up the stick.

They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old,
and names will never hurt me.

Age shall not weary them
nor the years condemn, condemn
as do we that are left to grow old.
Your grandson squints in a lemon-juice dawn
at a monument holding your wound like a flag.

He will pick it up because they said.
He will use it: use it on my back
and wonder that it does not break.
And he will take it home again;
they say that it is his to take.

I saw your spine all marked with dust
when I picked up the stick.

Oh Johnny I knew you all too well,
passing through hell’s needling eye
out into hills and the green-ferned ground
and never once to speak of it -

what was not remembered
we will not forget; forget as do we
that are left to grow weary.

They say
you exchanged blood for blood and mud
for the glum mud of the Waikato, and stilled
your tongue beside the waters.
Now heedless youths drink beer in Turkish sun,
watch it gild their skin, and believe
that false old alchemy.

Carry the stick carry the stick carry the
stick
carry the stick. Carry the stick oh
carry it —

I carried the stick.

At the going down of the sun and in the evening
(he-will-pick-it-up-because-they-said)
sticks and stones have built my bones,
(and-he-will-pick-it-up-because-they-said)
built of bones my house on sand.
(and he-will-pick-it-up-because-they-said)

At the set of memory our sight will fade
to the nation-blue of hell’s good eye
and land where the dead and the living lie

naming them hurts me, soldier boy —
shall I not remember what they said?

I stumbled accross a website today - Poets Against War - and the first poem I read was a poem by Olivia Macassey an Auckland poet I discovered this week. Her first collection of poems, Love In The Age of Mechanical Reproduction, was published by Titus in 2005.