orange poppy

orange poppy in the rain
my children are shod
now that took a long time, poppy
you wet with tears
I soaked through.


Dory Previn's Mythical Kings and Iguanas (full album) Please accept my advice: the album presents material some people may find disturbing.

Dory Previn was the talented songwriter who came to prominence in the 70s for audiences of listeners needing a poetess with this difference she spoke to the heart of emotional disturbance and pain. I cannot think off-hand of any more apt observation of her appeal to a disturbed generation who at the height of the Vietnam War were pretty well any day anticipating their dispossession of everything they had that was worth having...in our case where I was living our very survival. As a dissenter not only opposed to the continuation of Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War but to domestic infractions of justice perpetrated by the officials and in some part public servants of a State Government (Queensland) that was off the rails, I lost my naivety. That there was eventually a public enquiry and the restoration of some parts of justice seemed a miracle.

Yet I had been among the most conservative of the conservative. The times were fearful. They really were among the best and the worst of times.