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Congratulations Norma Poet Of The Month (Feb 2009)
« Thread Started on Feb 22, 2009, 7:17pm »

Congratulations Norma

Poet Of The Month
"Award winner"

This award was presented This month
( February ) -- 2009 To Norma Martiri

For your outstanding contribution
To the creative pen Poet Of The Month Competition
( February ) 2009

For Your Poem Entry - Port Arthur

[image]

Image: the view of the penitentiary from the bay at Port Arthur, Tasmania.

Port Arthur

Stark beauty and tranquillity belies a dark history,
of 12,000 convicts and their tormented misery.
Forty-seven years the Empire ruled with great detail,
brutality and lashes from the cat o’ nine tails.
Now their sorrows seep through every sordid crack,
tortured pain plain to see with each waning track.

They came from a distant land, on ships filled with grief,
convicted of petty crimes - some murderous thieves.
“Half a crown he stole, him a loaf of bread”,
who could justify this penal system in their head?
A cogged machine committed to “grinding rogues honest”,
punishment in this secondary hell thought to be the cruellest.

George Arthur was relentless; he knew what was at hand,
oppression for the convicts in Van Diemen’s Land.
Slogging dawn to dusk in beastly servile chains,
making bricks, building ships through their tortured pain.
A blooming timber industry sustained them all those years,
a settlement built here with bare hands, blood, sweat and tears.

This domain was hell on earth where the devil dominated,
a Model Prison played with minds and kept them separated.
Feel the lonely terror in a place men dared not speak,
at Sunday mass voices rose as high as they could peak.
Like a choir of angels heard across the sloping greens,
‘til to their cells restored again locked away unseen.

The "Isle of the Dead" aptly lies across the bay,
where finally on lower ground the convicts they did lay.
Mass graves for outcasts, no headstones they deserved,
high land for the Free, and soldiers who nobly served.
Two graves to be waiting on each and every day,
John Barron, resident grave digger, this he did obey.

The Asylum to restore the tormented who endured,
suffering at Port Arthur, their minds became obscured.
Shame and humiliation for many years festered,
soothing modern methods, now duly tried and tested.
Thus far damage added to poor distraught men,
some like caged animals in a lion’s den.

A Paupers’ place designed to keep the shattered from the slums,
poor broken men lingered here unfortunate victims.
cooking, washing, collecting and even playing the fiddle,
tending gardens gladly - sadly old and feeble.
A home for “old gentlemen”, an early welfare system,
all hopes conceded for their motherland and kinsmen.

Now their spirits linger, convicts and the others too,
footsteps can be heard; Rev Eastman and the Woman in Blue.
A child greets visitors by the Parsonage window bay,
an overwhelming presence can be felt on some days.
Church remnants haunting, walls eerily standing tall,
where convict blood had stained, ivy would not crawl.

As shadows fall we recall the tormented pain,
of long-ago lives, history for all to gain,
an insight to humanity, a lesson from the past,
shows future generations a system that could not last.
The Empire coldly reformed with such hostility,
now we stop and reflect their fate in this place –
of stark beauty and tranquillity.

Copyright © 2009 Norma Martiri

[image]

Your Poem was selected from among numerous contributions
For Our February 2009 Award Winner
"Poet Of The Month Award."
It has been selected on the basis of its artistic merit.
_____________________________________________

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