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Parakeets. (Rangiora, 1883). July 1933
Plenty of peaches to eat
For all marauders,
Children and parakeets
In our old orchard!
The little sleek popinjays
Well I remember,
Gay troupes of acrobats
Dressed in green velvet.
High in the peach-boughs
We clambered and feasted,
Swift from the wild bush
The bird bevvies hasted.
How prettily shrill
Was the sound of their clamour!
There has been no green since
Green as their glamour.
Never peach tastes now
As those peaches tasted,
They are bought and sold now
Graded in cases.
There are no parakeets
Clinging to peach-boughs,
Progress has banished them,
Vanished, our shingled house.
Practical fruit-orchards
Set out in neat rows
Fill up the hill-corners,
Screened where the wind blows.
Up-to-date bungalows
Spring where our peach-trees grew,
And no one to-day knows
Where the old cob-house stood.
New blights and parasites
The orchardist fights, and
The green birds have taken flight
To a sea-island . . .
They should have skill, I ween
Telling to children
Romances
Old tales and folk stories
With magic in them,
And fancies.
Who have themselves seen
A bright thing that has been,
For memory still green,
But now, no more is..
From Collected Poems (Caxton, 1950)
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