Read Online The Treatment and the Cure by Peter Kocan - Free Book Online

attitude towards the transfer. If he seems too eager it might look bad. If he doesn’t seem eager enough it might look bad.
    Eddie remembers the parcel.
    “Faaarkin parcel for ya, Len,” he says, handing it over.
    You start unwrapping it so that Eddie can see the contents. All letters and parcels have to be opened in front of a screw.
    “Nobody sends me any faaarkin parcels,” he’s grumbling. “You blokes are faaarkinwell spoiled rotten. If I was in control you’d all be on faaarkin bread ’n faaarkin water with chains on ya faaarkin legs.”
    Your heart gives a little leap when you unwrap the last of the paper. It’s a book,
Best English Poems: Chaucer to the Present Day.
    There’s a spot at the far end of the verandah where you like to sit and be alone sometimes. Of course you can’t really be alone, because of the other men pacing up and down near you, or lying along the benches beside you, or because the toilets are just next to your spot and there are always men there talking and smoking while they’re on the lavatory. The toilets have little low half doors on the front and you can always see somebody’s head and shoulders above the top and their feet at the bottom with trousers crumpled around them. A couple of screws are always on watch on the verandah so that you’re under observation. But you can sit there in your spot and look out at the lake through the wire and not talk to anyone and pretend that you’re almost alone. You have to be careful not to overdo it, that’s all. If the screws see you sitting quiet and staring too often, they’ll think you’re too withdrawn and might report it to the doctor. So you space out your alone periods. You make sure the screws see you playing billiards or cards, or see you talking and laughing with other men. When you’ve let them see you doing those things for a while you know it’s probably safe to go to your spot and try to be alone for maybe an hour. If you do it for more than an hour you’re taking a risk.
    Your new book of poems has a dark green cover and gold coloured lettering down the spine. You sit in your spot on the verandah and run your hands over the cover and the lettering and then flick the pages over so that you see a fast blur of print. The pages are very white and fresh and smell nice. You haven’t started to read it yet. You want to get used to the lovely feel of the book first. It’s only a cheap book, because your mother hasn’t got much money, but it’s got a beautiful feel. There’s another reason you haven’t started to read it yet. You feel a little afraid to start, in case you find that poetry isn’t what you expected.
    Your eye falls on a line of a poem near the back of the book:
    “The naked earth is warm with spring.” The poem is called “Into Battle” and that first line gives you a faint prickle of excitement.
    “The naked earth is warm with spring
    And with green grass and bursting trees
    Leans to the sun’s gaze glorying,
    And quivers in the sunny breeze;”
    Oh, it’s lovely. The hairs on the back of your neck are prickling right up.
    “And life is colour and warmth and light,
    And a striving evermore for these;
    And he is dead who will not fight;
    And who dies fighting has increase.”
    It’s giving you that same strong feeling you got from the
Bible
words about going through the valley of the shadow of death.
    “The fighting man shall from the sun
    Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth;
    Speed with the light-foot winds to run,
    And with the trees to newer birth;
    And find, when fighting shall be done,
    Great rest and fullness after dearth.”
    A whole new world is flooding into you. A whole new way of thinking about birds and sunlight and the sun’s gaze glorying. And then the poem goes on to the end about:
    “Through joy and blindness he shall know,
    Not caring much to know, that
    Not caring much to know, that still
    Nor lead nor steel shall touch him, so
    That it not be the Destined