After School

(with a nod to Richard Jefferies for ‘After London’ 1882)

I go up the street
and the young people grouped
round mandolin and guitar are trying out
lyrics they have written
while waiting outside
a venue for scripture study
They have taken imprecious metal
from their body flaps like last
ablutions before their song

I ride on the bike paths
and the young people
having abandoned tags,
yell out their ideas as they
whitewash the overpasses,
abseiling off bridges on rope slings,
preparing to write intelligent creative slogans
like their ‘Something Beautiful is Going to Happen”
in witty readable graffiti
on the clean slate of this old concrete.

I get on trains
and the young people
nod hello to me, and
instead of cadging a cigarette
say, “Mister! Can I read you
my poem about Billobelary.”
While listening, I hear one of the girls,
not plumbing that telco-sewer to gossip, but
philosophizing on her mobile phone.

I go to the hall tuition room
and the young people
run out before I’m in, saying:
‘Tell us the Lydian story of ‘The Song of
the Unnamed Queen’ again
… with a puppy grin of excuse: “because
Melanie didn’t hear it.”

I visit the library
and the Young People
are poring over classical histories and sharing
classic incidents in juicy plums they have found:
Melanie from the Odyssey,
a farmboy from Hesiod,
young wits from Juvenal.

The Future of Youth… maybe,
in Iceland, Falkland, or Poland ?
or
when Secondary School in Australia
is abolished.


2 March 2006 © Wayne David Knoll