ROOTS
Recruited to Revenge
© Brenda Joy, 2019
Winner, 2021 Nandewar Bush Poetry Competition Narrabri, NSW.
He conjures up the visions love can stir
and puffs the scents of oranges and myrrh.
He doesn’t know why turmoil wracks the youth.
He’s lost in his cocoon where even truth
cannot demoralise.
He found it hard to leave his native shore
but he had yearned to give his off-spring more.
Migrating to find harmony and peace
he’d prayed Australian life would mean release
from centuries of lies.
Dementia’s infiltrated years of age.
He’s out of tune with history’s harsh stage.
An elder still with dreams of native land
creates illusions, fails to understand
a generation’s cries.
.........
Denied mainstream belonging boy-hood craves…
entrapped in cloistered enclaves faith engraves…
susceptible to propaganda’s
curse…
impressionable, easy to coerce…
it
shows within their eyes.
Their hearts don’t match their passports stamped by birth.
Their blood-thirst flows from far across the earth
where turbulence and devastation reign
to reconcile a nation’s karmic stain
from conflict’s brutal
ties.
Their souls are full of hatred. Knives of steel
are thrust with depths that adolescents feel.
Conviction has convinced them
they are right.
Their anguish is compelling them
to fight
beneath
war ravaged skies.
.........
Indoctrination fuels revenge and lust.
Old man, your new-world dreams have turned to dust.
When Armageddon threatens and enslaves
and blood is spattered on ancestral graves
all hope and promise
dies.
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