History of Mitching in the 1970s*



Slick as a pair of fish we sidled out;
Away from Latin and its fiendish rules,
From Brother John larruping with his cane
Until garbled verbs and declining nouns, trapped
Like frantic animals, tumbled from us
So very wrong we hoped that he would cry.

Away from jotters, blotters and the cry
Of classmates acting up and acting out
Last night’s TV. Away. The two of us.
No Mexican Hats, Chinese burns or rules
Or rulers.  No day, this, for getting trapped
In chalky prison, caged by walls of cane.

Tomorrow - la deluge. Pitiless cane,
Merciless cleric, our dutiful cry.
For now we imagine ourselves un-trapped,
Abroad in an un-mastered world.  Out. Out,
Determinedly composing our own rules;
Devised, implemented, controlled by us.

No clue where green-spined loaning would lead us,
Too soon, too gauche, too young for raising Cain,
Yet bucks enough to need to break their rules.
Berries shone and amidst the Autumn cry
Of scolding crows we were bound to find out
That history’s hinterland held us trapped.

Not flailing, as when fish or fox is trapped
Whose wit and wile and instinct outdoes us;
Feigns death or chews a paw in getting out,
Or croppy rebels caching pratie cain**
As landlords razed hovels in hue and cry
And governments conspired with martial rules.


Ours were murder days of mural-writ rules.
Auld enemies, Prod and Taig freshly trapped,
Wrapped in bone-hatred and the cuckold cry
Of generations. It's 'Them' versus 'Us',
Neighbour on neighbour, a new land of Cain,
'No Surrender' 'Up the Provos' 'Brits Out'.


Freedom’s but a cry against other's rules,
A painful finding out that we’re all trapped
And that, poor us, each morning brings the cane.




(*Mitching - bunking off school)


(**cain – a form of payment in kind, resisted by farmer-tenants whose minute acreage barely provided enough for them to subsist, let alone pay absentee landlords a share.  Praties are potatoes.)