[Editor: This poem by “Dryblower” Murphy was published in Dryblower’s Verses (1926).]
Gore-dliness.
A Christmas Carol.
(The Boxing Stadium was crowded on Christmas Day)
Nigh twenty centuries ago
A star arose o’er Bethlehem;
The East with gloried gold aglow,
A diamond in a diadem.
The wise men came the Babe to view,
With golden offerings rich and rare,
Three kings His pathway to bestrew,
With perfume sweet arid flowers fair.
But here to-day Australia keeps
For Christ the chronic sneer and shrug,
And gold and greetings piles in heaps
Upon th’ unpretty pug.
Nigh twenty centuries ago
They gathered where He raised His voice,
He preached to mighty, meek and low
And bade the ailing poor rejoice.
Within the temple and the mart,
He taught His democratic creed,
He soothed the widow’s aching heart,
He gave the thirsty milk and mead.
Upon His birthday now they throng
Where raucous hoodlums howl and hoot,
And listen while a brazen gong
Beats o’er a bleeding brute!
Dead Lazarus He raised anew
To walk again the sunlit earth,
The children to His side He drew,
He chid the men of gold and girth.
Poor Magdalene He stooped to save,
And at a word her hunters fled,
He stilled the storm upon the wave,
He fed the multitude with bread.
In mans own image here He came,
Yet here while bells His message call,
That image we assault and maim,
Where man-gorillas brawl!
“Peace, peace on earth,” the bells ring out,
To all men greetings good and glad;
What time we hear the blinding clout
That makes the seconds mad or sad.
While deep cathedral organs peal,
In praise of Him they nailed on high,
We see a battered human reel,
With nose askew and closing eye,
And while God’s glorious anthems swell,
The earth reels underneath the row;
The backers of the victor yell
“Why don’t yer corpse the cow?”
* * *
Carry the carrion from the ring,
Wash up the bloodstains from the floor.
Relate the savage swat and swing,
The fractured rib, the splintered jaw.
The winner crown with bloody bays,
While in a ward severe and white
The loser in a mental haze,
Repeats his down-and-outed fight.
The resting barmaid coyly bites
The winner’s cauliflower ear,
His foe in long, delirious nights,
Drinks blood instead of beer.
Source:
Edwin Greenslade Murphy, Dryblower’s Verses, Perth, W.A.: E. G. Murphy, 1926, pp. 56-57
Previously published (with some differences) in:
The Sunday Times (Perth, WA), 24 December 1911, p. 6
[Editor: Added closing bracket after “Christmas Day”.]
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