Big Shame    by  Les Murray

When Dad and I first drove to Sydney
we shared billy tea by the kerb
brewed with water a housewife boiled for us.
Too flash for him, a café in a suburb,

though he could charm them dewy when he tried.
Same with all Up Home advice, where to eat
or stay, in the Big Smoke: it's always
cheap holes where slurs die of defeat.

One dictionary awards rural-poor speech
entire to the Black folk who share it:
box up, walk off, bad friends, Poor, growl,
cheeky, hollow, in with, hunt, quiet -

Define me all those, or spare the Proletariat.
It's called Big Shame, my poison-brother fellow
says, this feeling abashed by proper people.
Before Racist and Beaut Authentic, we were Low

for which you get sentenced to the past
- you never see the court -
to smokes, to single beds in plywood rooms,
to union legends, to sashcord round your port.

© Les Murray

from his book Conscious and Verbal
pub. Duffy & Snellgrove 1999