Saturday, February 16, 2008

THE PAST: A POLITICAL POEM BY INDRAN AMIRTHANAYAGAM

As we engage fully in the presidential race in the United States I thought I'd dust off and revise a poem from 1996 about a trade unionist from what's now known as Old Labor. The U.K., the United States and other liberal democracies may wish to ponder what the fellow has to say:


THE PAST


English trade
unionist
and hoary
member
of Old
Labor
testifies
as ornithologist:

It’s like
a bird.
It has a right
wing
and a left
wing.
If it loses
a wing,

it has only
one wing,
and
plummets
to the ground.
You CAN’T
fly with one
wing.



-- Indran Amirthanayagam, c) 2008

2 comments:

yich said...

I really liked this one. The metre and the mood.
yichaelle

Indran Amirthanayagam said...

pleased that you like this poem. I found it in a folder of poems that I had wanted to review again in the search for lost treasures. I like the whimsy of it. took a look again at your blog and am enjoying dipping into your poems and photographs.