Poem
Judith Beveridge
BAHADOUR
BAHADOUR
BAHADOUR
The sun stamps his shadow on the walland he’s left one wheel of his bicycle
spinning. It is dusk, there are a few minutes
before he must pedal his wares through
the streets again. But now, nothing
is more important than this kite working
its way into the wobbly winter sky.
For the time he can live at the summit
of his head without a ticket, he is following
the kite through pastures of snow where
his father calls into the mountains for him,
where his mother weeps his farewell into
the carriages of a five-day train. You can
see so many boys out on the rooftops this
time of day, surrendering diamonds to
the thin blue air, putting their arms up, neither
in answer nor apprehension, but because
the days tenders them a coupon of release.
He does not think about the failing light,
nor of how his legs must mint so many steel
suns from a bicycle’s wheels each day,
nor of how his life must drop like a token
into its appropriate slot; not even
of constructing whatever angles would break
the deal that transacted away his childhood –
nor of taking some fairness back to Nepal,
but only of how he can find purchase
with whatever minutes of dusk are left
to raise a diamond, to claim some share
of hope, some acre of sky within a hard-fisted
budget; and of how happy he is, yielding,
his arms up, equivalent now only to himself,
a last spoke in the denominations of light.
© 2004, Judith Beveridge
From: Wolf Notes
Publisher: Giramondo Publishing Company,
From: Wolf Notes
Publisher: Giramondo Publishing Company,
Poems
Poems of Judith Beveridge
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BAHADOUR
The sun stamps his shadow on the walland he’s left one wheel of his bicycle
spinning. It is dusk, there are a few minutes
before he must pedal his wares through
the streets again. But now, nothing
is more important than this kite working
its way into the wobbly winter sky.
For the time he can live at the summit
of his head without a ticket, he is following
the kite through pastures of snow where
his father calls into the mountains for him,
where his mother weeps his farewell into
the carriages of a five-day train. You can
see so many boys out on the rooftops this
time of day, surrendering diamonds to
the thin blue air, putting their arms up, neither
in answer nor apprehension, but because
the days tenders them a coupon of release.
He does not think about the failing light,
nor of how his legs must mint so many steel
suns from a bicycle’s wheels each day,
nor of how his life must drop like a token
into its appropriate slot; not even
of constructing whatever angles would break
the deal that transacted away his childhood –
nor of taking some fairness back to Nepal,
but only of how he can find purchase
with whatever minutes of dusk are left
to raise a diamond, to claim some share
of hope, some acre of sky within a hard-fisted
budget; and of how happy he is, yielding,
his arms up, equivalent now only to himself,
a last spoke in the denominations of light.
From: Wolf Notes
BAHADOUR
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