Echoes

Raymond who ? she said .

Raymond Carver , I replied , the American

short story writer and poet .

Never heard of him , she said

and being a year eight standard I was inclined

to believe her .

And yet it was startling how Carveresque

her writing was .

Phrases like “ I will never know where — what

shall I call him — this man has gone “

spring particularly to mind .

And I thought of the nine year old boy who wrote

like the Dickens in Pickwick Papers , for instance ;

another who wrote florid full-on verse

like Chris Marlowe

and the highly strung girl who came for one term

and wrote like Emily Bronte

though none had ever read these writers

and the year nine autiste who at times

wrote like them all .

Sylvia who ?

the manic depressive from the back

of the class called

black hair slashed across her face

as I read the opening lines of her poem

to her father

fuelled with fury and neo-Nazi imagery .

Never mind , I said

as I wondered whether the ghosts

of dead writers

had come to inhabit the young

and whether over the next few years

I’d meet an embryonic

Will Shakespeare

an Oscar

or antipodean Dostoevsky .

Collect their juvenilia .

One day I’ll make a killing

*pic courtesy of pinterest