contents - Christ College Brecon - Archive

WHAT CAN YOU KNOW OF
WRONG OR RIGHT. OF EVIL OR
GOOD? YOU ARE THE CRIME
This vision came
To a man asleep
Over a book
Beside his candle.
A beast came up
Into the flame
As into the dock.
The sleeper spoke:
"I have to laugh.
You stand accused
And convicted
Of being born
The Unicorn,
God's other son
Whose nature heals
With earthlier stuff,
But just the same
To be sacrlficed-
That opiate beast
Worshipped by
The humbly addicted
Bodily ill
And misery
Of the whole east:
Your every grain
Both anodyne
And Eucharist.
No wonder man
Craving his drug
Divides you small
Strips every scrap
And bloody rag
Off your wrath,
Hooked on his faith
Or senile hope
Your relics will heal
And restore all.
OLD BRECONIAN NEWS
And carves your horn
To adorn
The dagger that stands
His touchy pride's
Totem pole-
The sentinel
Over the hole
Of his navel
And what it hides.
You are to blame.
With your horn's length
You have nailed your strength
To Eden's coffin
Tree, the tree
Of Sophistry
Too solidly
To tug yourself free.
So now you die."
Already dead
The Rhino cried
From a puddle of blood
Almost dried
In the African dust:
What can you know
Of right or wrong
Of good or evil?
You are the crime.
I accept
I no more exist
Outside you dream
And lethal whim
Of what I am
Than the Beetle can­
Though on many aplaque
Where the dead go
Beneath Egypt
The rising sun
And horn of Iight­
Be other than black"
Then the man sighed
And sniffed the waft
Of a candle snuffed.
And lay back in the crypt
of his time-warped skull
Under a wall
Where long ago
The Rhino had left
His lowley name
As a silhouette
Writ in soot
***
The Rhino's mask, a total wound,
The whole face a mouth opened
Uttering its heart-blood a cry,
Fails to deter a single fly.
His murderer hears the bloody mouth
Tell more than the horn is worth:
Glamour of the game, the poachers' wars,
Appease addicted ancestors.
The middle-man, who folds the notes,
Deafened by the silenced throats
That feed mankind, yawn at blood
That curses man and cries to God.
And he who wears the Rhino's knife
Hearing the cry, cannot believe
That this, his pride, is a global crime
For which the fine is a global shame.
N. Menon (3)
Canon N. W.J. Autton, (1933-39) is now Chancellor of lIandaff Cathedral. (Formei' OBs to hold this Office were
J.D. James, ST. Phillips and W.M.G. Simon). Dr. Autton has published yet another book.
J.N. Davies (1947-54) Chief Development Engineer for Lee Green Precision Industries.
G.c. Jones (1978-85) Graduated from R.M.A. Sandhurst (Sovereign's Platoon). Commissioned into 1st Battalion,
Royal Welch Fusiliers.
K.A. Jones (1950-56) Appointed Managing Director of Ruberoid (J.K.) Limited.
w'J.B. Jones (1972-77) is on the Staff of Loretto Junior School.
J.M.N. Powell (1967-72) now a Captain in the Royal Regiment of Wales. He qualified as a Solicitor before joining
the Army and is at present at Staff College.
J.N. Powell (1973-78) Lieutenant in the Royal Regiment of Wales and was Mentioned in Despatches (Northern
Ireland Tour) 16th., October, 1984.
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