Thoughts of Hemi

11pm, the coffee shop untidily empty
Jim sits tense with piercing state:
"What could a commune really do?

The Campus was soulless, bare,
This day I spent seeking there.
Where is its soul, its heart?
What are the feelings of our young?
Have we never had Maori love of Mother Earth?
What of the deep-lined anxious faces outside Campus
Who knew the Depression, the young know not
And now, consumer-caught by pressures often unsought.
Do we know the native love of land?"
Tensely the questions surged and surged

"Got pencil, paper, envelope?
Must write a note, or find that kid, Now
He's caught with cops over dope—
Must find a place for him somewhere—
The Campus is no place for love to learn."

A month or so later Jerusalem
Somewhere north, was born—where
A restless spirit journeyed far amidst
Police, parson, social worker, uni-teacher, civil servant,
About the land its soul to find.

Will Governor-General and Parliamentarians assembled there in opening prayer

"For the peace, tranquillity, good government of the nation"
Rise in Silence, then feel his prayer
For the AROHA of the Maori
And read the prayers of Jerusalem?
Will churches scrap dreary musty sermons
And search for Jerusalem's spirit themselves to live by?
Will academics search their souls and say "poor misguided fellow", Or
So by example live and work that more like him may arise,
To dare lift our horizons
From Apathy, colourless and deadening lives.
And on Campuses, soulless and dead,
Maybe heart, feeling, mind and Will
(In places where anger is not respectable still)
Cos perhaps Jim's restless soul won't leave the land,
So there may be some who will Dare
To Anger at social injustice in our midst.
Academics—shrouded in banal words,
Parsons—with musty, lifeless sermons.
Campuses—become real, alive—communal,
Parliamentarians—feel and act the truth of the words they speak,
And the peoples will begin to care with strength from
Jerusalem's soul and body buried there.
2 am, or thereabouts, coffee shop closed
5 am, or thereabouts, we found the B.A. Hons. Kid in the Cells.

Ifor ab Gwyn