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SCMP Reporter

The following is the text of Poetry On The Air, to be aired on RTHK's Radio4 at 10.05 am today and 6.30pm tomorrow.

  It is easy to identify with poems about school. John Walsh wrote about a bully.

  You would expect such a poem to talk about the mean things a bully does.

 But a poet's job is to make the world different and so Walsh has not written a poem that conforms to our expectations. Instead he had a very original idea - a sleeping bully!   And that is the title of the poem, The Bully Asleep. It presents the bully in a position of weakness for a change.

 The bully's name is Bill Craddock and one day he falls asleep in class.

  One afternoon, when grassy   Scents through the classroom crept,   Bill Craddock laid his head   Down on his desk, and slept.

  The other children in the class, who have probably all been victims of Bill Craddock's bullying gather around Bill:   The children came round him:   Jimmy, Roger, and Jane;   They lifted his head timidly  And let it sink again.

  The teacher tells the children to sit back in their places:  'Stand away from him children,'   Miss Andrews stooped to see.

  'Yes, he's asleep; go on   With your writing, and let him be.'  It is interesting that the teacher doesn't wake Bill up.

   May be she is happy to have him asleep so he won't disturb her class.

   But the children see a good chance for revenge and they begin plotting.

 'Now's a good chance!' whispered Jimmy;   And he snatched Bill's pen and hid it.

  'Kick him under the desk, hard;   He won't know who did it.'   'Fill all his pockets with rubbish -   Paper, apple-cores, chalk.'   So they plotted, while Jane sat wide eyed at their talk.

  Jane now becomes the key figure in the poem, because although Bill is a bully she pities him. The other children may have been the victims of Bill's bullying but are they any better than him in trying to bully him just because he has fallen asleep.

  Jane shows us that she is capable of forgiveness and sympathy. Only Jane can break away from the cycle of bullying violence:  'Stick him with pins!' muttered Roger.

  'Ink down his neck!' said Jim.

  But Jane, tearful and foolish, wanted to comfort him.

  John Greenleaf Whittier's poem, At School-Close deals with leaving school for the last time.

 The end has come, as come it must   To all things; in these sweet June days   The teacher and the student trust   Their parting feet to separate ways.

  They part; but in the years to be   Shall pleasant memories cling to each,   As shells bear inland from the sea   The murmur of the rhythmic beach . . .

  Have you ever put a shell to your ears and heard the sound of the sea? Will that distant sound be like the memories you have in later life of your days at school? This is an edited version of the programme.



Let sleeping bullies lie