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force the white man into realising his own hypocrisy — “I have a dream
that . . . this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.”
Yet. Whitey neither confronts nor realises anything . Instead he hides — hides
behind his own wall of indifference. The Negro is finding his own private
solution to this public problem and only time will test the truth of the state
ment made by Floyd McKissick, the leader of the Congress of Racial Equality
(C.O.R.E.) — “There is now a confrontation between the soul and society and
the soul will win.”
DENISE LAWRENCE, 12A.
BEST POEM (GRADES 9-10)
THE SECRET OF THE MACHINES
We were taken from the ore-bed and the mine.
We were melted in the furnace and the pit;
We w'ere cast and wrought and hammered to design.
We were cut and filed and tooled and gauged to fit.
Some water, coal, and oil is all we ask.
And a thousandth of an inch to give us play:
And now if you will set us to our task.
We will serve you four-and-twenty hours a day !
We can pull and haul and push and lift and drive.
We can print and plough and weave and heat and light;
We can run and jump and swim and fly and drive.
We can see and hear and count and read and write !
DAWN DUMMER. 10C1.
BEST PROSE ARTICLE (GRADES 9-10)
GOOD NEIGHBOURS
A child in the sun. playing, cuts his finger and cries. But somewhere else.
far away, there is real pain. Australian children are free — free to condemn
a neighbour; free to be bullied by Big Man America — Father of Riots, he
kills his own. Bow down ye mighty !
A dark country smells of death, and the innocent die. and the holy church
is bombed. Come my children !
A child, deformed, is burned by napalm one half hour after his parents
died in the bombing. And ye Christians cry !
He crawls now. crying, begging in vain, and a kind American gives him a
chocolate bar. and some chewing gum. and turns. Tall American, kind, thinking
of Home, is appalled by all this. Where is the church now ?
The child goes to the church, crumbled; there is no roof and the cross
(or maybe it is Sacred Buddha) lies on the earth. Something is there. The smell
is different.
Boy, in a corner tries to hide from bombs, bullets, napalm and fear. Boy,
small part of a big world, looks for love. His mother is dead — but his people
exist, fighting, dying, living, mourning the dead when there is time to mourn.
But they are confused. What are we fighting for ?
Memories loom. Since 1945 there have been American guardians. But now
they fight with them and against them. But why ?
Small child, in a bombed church, is hiding, praying. He is maimed and
burned. He is part of something he doesn't understand. War !
There is hate growing, malignant ulcer — hate. It is not hate for his
country, but hate for the bombers, the tall Americans, and some remote place
called Washington. Here is the seed of patriotism.
He turns his eyes towards the sky and sees the infinite blue. He reaches.
for here is the open door to freedom, and he is suddenly five hundred feet tall.
He sees the release. He believes that one day . . .
Small boy, no longer crying, a little warm, is full of hope in the church
with the cross on the ground and the bombs overhead. In Vietnam.
This is how and for what we should be good neighbours — but are we ?
“Thou shalt love thy neighbour.”
BETTY SWANN. 10C4.

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