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Salient. Victoria University of Wellington Students' Newspaper. Vol. 32, No. 23. September 24, 1969

Poem for Magdalen

Poem for Magdalen

Photos: Jeff Kennedy

Photos: Jeff Kennedy

Photos: Jeff Kennedy

Photos: Jeff Kennedy

Where have they taken the man
whose blood and time
ran out the holes in his body
made by the blunt instruments
first fashioned by men
in caves? Do not look here;
hate has a distant precedent.
The man has been taken away,
only the mind is left crucified

In the same quarter as the hill
is the garden where we look
alternately for the teacher
then the fighter, deciding more
often for the latter because
his craft is less invidious.
To destroy means to kill what
is dead and what engenders death.

And so it could go on, each man
to his own calvary. Skulls litter
the desert; perhaps we do look
in the wrong places. Others have
their own business. I ask for
nothing more than this, to see
a god in a gardener's guise.

–P. F. Ireland