YUH RAP SO (0.1)

 

            
            +IT wasn't just because she had looked around
            Clear-eyed at every blood-bound thing + could find
            Nothing that moved her any more back to faith
            In the Force behind men’s masks – except the breath
            Now + then of a not malefic presence
            Transgressing the burial of its pretense
            Of being full-blooded though not quite human,
            Hard to know whether as man or as woman,
            Ghosts the mere climate-clouds of that hard-nosed zone
            Of Earth haunted by nothing else – unless pain,
            Voiceless, was its principal tenanting wraith:

            No, it was a pressure harder to live with
            That made Sister Dilys confide to Robb Ladd,
            Her teenage colleague whose tight-trousered gonads
            Could well prove more than mere mocking of her veil,
            – Robb, boy, I’m losing my faith, pray for my soul –
            Regretting her words even before she could
            Stop spluttering them like drops from a thin cloud:
            

       (from “Raponani” . a verse novel by Brian Chan, 2023)