Yeovil Literary Prize
2008

Final Judging - Poetry Category
Title: Papua New Guinea.  1950.  Photograph of a Tribesman
Reference: 10/EC02191/C001575/Z015
Decision:

  
  
Comments:

 

      

The man came to us with nothing on his back
but plenty on his mind, his slaves rescuing
his possessions from the greedy slap and smack
of the tide, some holding boats rearing 
in the surf, some raising boxes head high 
above the tide.  One offered him water, 
one created his shelter, one breathed his fire.  
This man is either very weak, we thought, 
or very strong.  We were right, although 
we did not know it.  And we were wrong.

The man said that he brought with him a gift.
He unwrapped it, stood it like a new born beast
in front of us, unsteady on its legs and stiff.
He said that he had come to seek the bravest
amongst us, that one young man by saying yes
would choose to travel far beyond the seas,
would know more fame than the ancestors,
would be captured for posterity.
And all for this for nothing, or so he promised.
But we did not share the same idea of cost.

I was a young man then and full of vanity.  
I stepped forward.  My woman brought me my son. 
My father brought me my mask.  I could see
he was excited and I was overcome
by flattery.  He took me to his shelter, 
a womb of a moonless night of his own.   
stood me, as straight as a palm and naked, held me
taut like a cheetah and tight; placed me, alone
with the earth on my feet and my feet on the ground,
rotated my wrist to expose the palm of my hand.

Then he touched my son.  Took his chin
in thin white fingers, turned it like a trader
turns a gold-lipped shell. I did nothing.
The crocodile, the eagle, the long-beaked echidna
would not have frozen under such dark magic.
But I did nothing and he, he did whatever he liked.
He dressed himself in his ceremonial mask
and he and his beast summoned their lightning.
And I had sold my soul for a fraud and a faking.
But I was a young man then, and there for the taking.