Elisabeth Wentworth: Two Poems

On Forgiveness

I might have worn those chains for life

Or lived like a puppet dancing on tangled strings

Bound by the cord to the hurt and the memory

Always at the mercy of the lesser gods.

A life of sorts but circular, no progress

Waiting long years for release, for apology

For some small expression of regret.

Instead I learned that forgiveness is a choice

A decision to turn and stand and face and say

Enough! I cut the cord. I set myself free.

Elisabeth Wentworth

The Legacy

i.m. John Wentworth

Your last working days, mid-illness, were spent in retreat

A promising teacher, given the library as respite

From the heat and the chaos of the classroom, a place

To postpone the hard decisions and the long rest ahead.

Inner-urban, the eighties, another wave of refugees

Washing through on their way to free-standing dreams.

That year, the last of the Nguyens from what we all thought
Were the last of the boats, surely, passed through the gates.

You called them to read like a coach with a starting gun ‘

“On your marks, get set … wait (said with a growl) … Go!”

They would race to the shelves, books flying through air

Caught, opened, eaten, shared.

You re-stocked the library

Twice that year, taking with you the ones who played up

And the ones who sat silent, still waiting for the boat to sink.

The warehouse was the Education Department’s secret pride

No children allowed.

But you gave them each a trolley and sorted out the forms

And the objections later. On your marks … Go!

And they ran, racing up and down Australian aisles

Extracting fresh books by look, smell, feel

Learning entitlement—this is your country now

While you caught your breath and wished them well.

The books they claimed were read that year again and again

Almost to shreds by the time the next wave

washed through the gates.

Elisabeth Wentworth