I ... entered the poem of life, whose purpose is ... simply to witness the beauties of the world, to discover the many forms that love can take. (Barabara Blackman in 'Glass After Glass')

These poems are works in progress and may be updated without notice. Nevertheless copyright applies to all writings here and all photos (which are either my own or used with permission). Thank you for your comments. I read and appreciate them all, and reply here to specific points that seem to need it — or as I have the leisure. Otherwise I reciprocate by reading and commenting on your blog posts as much as possible.

29 September 2010

Numbers

After watching the movie, Balibo

There were six.
We always think there were five:
three from Channel 7,
two from Channel 9.
And there were.
‘The Balibo Five’.
The five who died.

‘Caught in the crossfire,’
the Indonesians said,
and that was true too;
only that was not
what killed them.
They were executed.
There were witnesses.

There were three witnesses —
just teenage boys
but already freedom fighters —
who came to give the story
to the other one, the sixth,
the sixth Australian journalist
killed to prevent truth.

(In 1975, I was
a Melbourne housewife,
a young mother with zero
special information, but even I
knew what was going to happen.
You can’t tell me
the Australian Government didn’t.)

There were three
and then two more.
There were five
and one came after.
There were six
white Australian journalists.
Oh, and 183,000 East Timorese.


30 Poems in 30 Days, 2010: 18
Prompt: A poem that repeatedly uses numbers

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