<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
School Room, Upper Silesia 1933<\/strong> In that moment when the shutter was pressed Fifty boys in rows, with folded arms or hands He tells them that knowledge is wealth. The alphabet hangs on the wall, every One boy blinked and is given clouds for eyes. The words on the streets are Fire and Murder its wooden bird rises from her burning nest and beats quietly in a bed of soft ash. they\u2019ll have become men of sorts, outgrown <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Martin Figura<\/strong>\u2019s collection Dr Zeeman\u2019s Catastrophe Machine<\/em> (Cinnamon Press) and pamphlet Shed<\/em> (Gatehouse Press) are both due out in 2016.\u00a0 The show of Dr Zeeman starts touring in 2016.\u00a0 He was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and won the Saboteur Award for his previous show Whistle.\u00a0<\/em> He lives in Norwich where he works part-time at the Writers\u2019 Centre and runs Caf\u00e9 Writers.<\/p>\n Note:\u00a0 School Room, Upper Silesia 1933\u00a0<\/em> was first published in The Rialto<\/em> and was commended by Anthony Thwaite in the Ledbury Poetry Competition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" School Room, Upper Silesia 1933 Freedom and Bread In that moment when the shutter was pressed no-one looked away.\u00a0 So the camera held each luminous face in its gaze, kept them there, each grin, lost look or open stare. Fifty boys in rows, with folded arms or hands in front, their grubby fingers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[139,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2015-poetry-picks","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9565"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23797,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9565\/revisions\/23797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nFreedom and Bread<\/em><\/p>\n
\nno-one looked away.\u00a0 So the camera
\nheld each luminous face in its gaze, kept
\nthem there, each grin, lost look or open stare.<\/p>\n
\nin front, their grubby fingers curling over
\nthe rims of wooden desks.\u00a0 The master stands
\nat the back, his hat on a peg by the door.<\/p>\n
\nMy father looks out from the third row
\nchin raised and clear-eyed, sure of himself,
\nbut there were things he couldn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n
\nunderlined letter chanted until known
\nwell enough for words to come easy,
\nas beyond the door, the first stones are thrown.<\/p>\n
\nThe smallest sits at the front and wears
\na dirty striped jacket, his face betrays
\nthat he already knows the use of words.<\/p>\n
\nthey ring clear against the tenement blocks
\nand shop windows.\u00a0 The schoolmaster
\nturns the key of a black music box,<\/p>\n
\na voice as pure as the serious child –
\nblack tie and leather strap across his chest
\nwhich rises and falls where his heart is held<\/p>\n
\nIts slow grey storm coats tongues, clogs nostrils
\nand stings eyes.\u00a0 By the time they can wash,
\nscrape it away from under their fingernails,<\/p>\n
\nthe classroom\u2019s hard benches and made their way;
\nsome in polished boots, some with triangles sewn
\non their shirts and nothing left to know.<\/p>\n