FOR JEAN WILLIAMS
(Author of "Cry in the Wilderness")
I met her in the grey coldness of a dull, Launceston day.
Vietnam Veterans' Convention, 1996.
In her early seventies now, she hugs us. Calls all, "her boys."
Maternal. Softness of spirit.
Yet her grandmother eyes flash with the zeal of cause,
And in that tiny Anzac frame, all the courage and tenacity her "boys" too,
had shown once, in the far-off jungles of that Asian land is here revealed.
Not for her the days of black-clad men in sandals soft,
Of bunkers, stealth, and death on lonely tracks. No, not for her.
Nor breathed the sprays - that wafting, poisoned rain from high-
Man's inhumanity to man, par excellence. No, not her days,
Though she was there with us, in spirit tied,
Among the tracers and the mines, and the cries of men at war.
Not for her the quiet retreat, of flowers, fairs, or pies on window sills,
Or idle talk of lace and silk, with tea and cake and women friends,
Though she is woman, through and through.
No, time marches on- this enemy of us all,
And in this Christian woman's breast a fire burns, holds high her Cross,
To right some deadly wrongs while time remains.
Yes, hers is a different world-
The nether-world of black-suit men in politics, and fat-cat bureaucrats
Who wage the paper war of subterfuge, of sleigh-of-hand, and trick,
Who sent the sons of others off to fight, then hid their own, and then themselves,
"Men", whose very manhood is a lie.
Slightly-stooped, she carries burdens great.
Her shoulders sag with the ears of men now gone, and yet to go,
Holds in her arms and heart a sadness overflowing-
Of fathers buried, and families torn asunder,
And in her eyes, knowledge profound
That Agent Orange wages still its savage war.
Yes, she stands on our behalf, this grey-haired mother of a hero son,
And fights for us, the poisoned remnant of warrior days,
Our fighting days now largely done,
Whose days were numbered by dioxin's deadly curse,
And the hands of cowards hiding still the truth.