Perth Voice Interactive

An entry from our Summer Reading competition.

My Mother’s Mother’s Eyes 

I walked the corridors of grief
Until I berthed in Tenerife
Onto a land os obsolete
Save the rays upon the water,
I was led across a reef
By the hand of a tall thief
Who sold me false belief
Before he crumbled into the mortar

Now I’m walking ‘round like Alfred Wallace
Through the Halmahera forest
Whilst the birds of paradise
Sedate my with their tender sonnets

But time don’t do girls like us favours
We’re grieving now for Old Malaysia
Borneo was born to burn
Lest you and I serve its savior

Still, wedding cakes drive me crazy
How sixty years could’ve saved me
from all I’ve tried to hide,
I’m going back to Borneo
To Rivers that we’ll never know
Until you wake them
with those wild, lovely eyes.

Now you appear in every fountain
Through the clouds atop the mountains
I stop to watch you glide,
To think the sky once seemed so empty
Before the guards of heaven sent me
A deity so alive
And you’re on carousels in capitals
You’re floating over waterfalls
You know that when our homes all drown
We’ll go swimming down the halls

Beyond the Welsh Winterlands
Her wave of love breaks on new sands,
A wave so distant as there she stands
A flickering light in the storm’s demands

Now I’m looking in hallways
And under the doorways
To find a better way to treat her
I’m visiting prisons
Telling who’ll listen
Of the vows I’d vent to keep her

I scan guest lists at weddings
And beneath the bedding
For the love I’ve let defeat her
I’m riding on railways
I’m telling the bridesmaids
Of the loans I’d lend to greet her

And still, sixty years drives me crazy
To know your love will always save me
From this rising tide
We’re going back to Borneo
To rivers who deserve to know
The sight of those eyes
Eyes so lovely and so wide

We’ll pour our dreams into the ocean
For every nation’s a lost notion
Sold off on genocide

But you and me and Borneo
The only souls who’ll ever know
The sight of those eyes
Eyes as a river cries
Oh, so lovely and so wide
My Mother’s Mother’s eyes
How so lovely and so wide

by DOM WILLIAMS