Title: May-July 1993

Author: Emma Neale

In: Sport 13 Spring 1994

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, October 1994

Part of: Sport

Keywords: Verse Literature

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Sport 13 Spring 1994

May-July 1993

May-July 1993

Hello, I am a New Zealander
living in England.
This is my language:
the BBC, Radio Four;
the Independent and the Guardian;
this is where the war is on.

The war is we were forced
to urinate and defecate
in the mosque.
A young Muslim man died
nailed to a cross.

When we spoke they beat our palms
with sticks. They cut off ears or noses.
They jumped off a table onto our chests.
I cannot go outside the city limits
to collect past months of evidence.

page 45

If I write of summer—

In a park a sixty-year-old
bare armed to the weather
discusses a New Zealand child’s
World War Two:
the dog tags make of leather
that would have burned through
in an air raid; the drills
in the local field.

Now he is in England.
This is his mother tongue.
He says we have been so lucky,
to have had no wars since that one.

Hello, this is our native speech.
This is where nothing can take place.
This is where they preach
that there is only one face
for the true crucifixion.

He says our differences are small—
a matter of diction.

And if I write of summer—