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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=551839" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Ex-Patria</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">The beginning of the end of our Canadian winter; <br>The ending of a British winter, <br>And their gentle spring ahead of ours.<br>I always think about these overlapping seasons, <br>In the forty-four years I have lived in Québec. <br> <br>Yes, Québec and all its solitudes: <br>I, too, felt solitary within the class system<br>in the England I had left behind.<br>I was twenty-two when I turned my back on it; <br>I simply left it all behind, vowing I'd forget everything <br>But the friends whom I loved.<br>I left behind familial ties, <br>Home-grown attitudes, <br>And closed minds; <br>I felt relief, like discarding <br>A heavy winter overcoat In spring.<br>I packed my old school trunk -<br>It carried the label of my new address -<br>MONTRÉAL <br>As I had no residence yet.<br>So I set off to a country <br>I knew nothing about, <br>A country that patriots<br>Alluded to with derision<br>As my 'Going to the Colonies'.<br>Said with such contempt.<br>Nevertheless, on a damp November day<br>I boarded the 'Empress of Canada'<br>Steaming from the docks at Liverpool.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The gusty gales tossed its mightiness<br>Into a mere toy ship bobbing on the crest<br>Of each tempestuous wave.<br>Lurching starboard, then aft, then port, <br>In the turgid, cold Atlantic cod-infested waters.<br>I left with absolutely no regrets, <br>Without a single pang of conscience.<br>I left behind the injustice and humiliation<br>Of my turbulent teenage years spent<br>Incarcerated in a convent boarding school<br>Run by horrible nuns - but not entirely, <br>For the dreadful feelings lingered<br>And haunted me like ghosts.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When I left, <br>I didn't know anything about <br>'That' and 'This-ness', <br>Only that I was happy to go.<br>My friends were excited for me<br>And we said our goodbyes, <br>At first giggling like silly schoolgirls, <br>Then sobbing into our linen handkerchiefs.<br>The others I cared not about.<br>I left them slumbering contentedly<br>In their all-familiar places -<br>Like cats who curl their lips<br>And preen their fur, and sleep<br>In sunbeams on a carpetted floor.<br>Yes, they were much like that - <br>Occasionally prowling, <br>Testing their predatory powers, <br>Maiming a few nesting birds<br>And their young, <br>Just for the fun of it.<br>I left them all sleeping<br>Underneath their ancestral <br>Counterpanes in their cozy<br>Corner of England, <br>Oblivious to my absence. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">It seemed as if a raging storm <br>Had shorn through the thickness <br>Of my girth, <br>Leaving part of me<br>Still rooted in the ground -<br>Dislocated, defenceless; <br>The stump that remained, <br>More an amputation <br>Than a dis-settlement.<br>Yes, later when they woke, <br>And found me gone, <br>No doubt they judged me <br>Not in absentia, but ex-patria; <br>A deserter of the realm, <br>A place where the venerable words<br>Of the brave Horatio Nelson<br>(Viscount, no less) rang out: <br>'England expects every man will do his duty'.<br>But I ran, ran out on them all<br>That day in November nineteen sixty-two, <br>Not as they supposed for want of a moral code, <br>But because I cherished and wanted to save<br>The one I had.<br> <br>One so deeply implanted within my British heart<br>It made me feel ashamed that the English<br>Still perpetuated a system that took away<br>Dignity and self respect. <br>That denied equality of man.<br>Why had I gone? <br>They later wrote: <br>But never stopped to think<br>My young, impulsive pulse<br>Was racing, <br>Or that my tenuous frame<br>Trembled for adventure, <br>Wanting to taste and sense<br>Other lands, other peoples; <br>To venture westward <br>Through the endless.<br>Undulating prairie plains of wheat, <br>To the turquoise lakes, <br>The mountains, springs and rivers.<br>To see the grizzly bears, <br>The buffalo, the caribou<br>In their natural habitat: <br>To recapture 'Hiawatha'<br>Underneath the giant red-woods of the West -<br>I, Minnehaha, Laughing Water.<br>Yes, I wanted to see the tepees<br>The totem poles and the Indians<br>Coined 'Red' by the British<br>To separate them<br>From the Colonial Indians<br>They ruled on the other side<br>Of the world.<br>For 'There's a flag that waves o'er every sea, <br>No matter when or where; <br>And to treat that flag as aught but the free<br>Is more than the strongest dare.<br>For the lion-spirits that tread the deck<br>Have carried the palm of the brave; <br>And that flag may sink with a shot-torn wreck, <br>But never float over a slave.<br>Its honour is stainless, deny it who can; <br>And this is the flag of an Englishman'.<br>I had dreams of travelling further<br>To other foreign shores, <br>To continue on to Billa-Bong Land<br>Where the swagmen swaggered<br>Their metal cans. <br>Where girls were called 'Sheilas'.<br>Where, in the outback, the only shade<br>Was under the sparse eucalyptus trees; <br>The aborigines standing tall<br>and watchful standing<br>On one leg day and night<br>Under darkening, purple skies; <br>Or went on their walk-abouts, <br>Mystical, <br>Proud, <br>Where the narrative poems<br>Of 'Banjo' Patterson and Henry Lawson<br>Came alive.<br>Part of me was an easily frightened child, <br>Running like a deer from the dark shadows<br>Following me; <br>and part a very curious child, <br>Impatient to see wild plants and flowers<br>Other than the perfumed rambling roses<br>Of my homeland. <br>I wanted to embrace the space.<br>In deserts, where there were cactii and sand, <br>Mystical in its imagery.<br>Spears of marram grass, <br>Broken and bent, <br>Yet anchored to the dune, <br>Whipped by the whistling desert winds, <br>Drawing concentric circles in the sand, <br>Scribing perfect arcs, <br>Better than a schoolboy's compass.<br>Where the malleable landscape<br>Offered little escape, <br>Where there were soft, <br>Distant undulations, <br>Wriggling plains, <br>Golden-blue ribbed sand, <br>Where there were patterns<br>Of different kinds - <br>Some like braided trails, <br>or grains of wheat.<br>Yes, I admit I had intended to go back, <br>Unexpectedly, the plan changed. <br>I married for better or worse, <br>Then stayed in this courageous land.<br>But in a short time I became<br>A prisoner of a nasty marital war<br>I neither enlisted for nor understood.<br>One day my spirit simply broke, <br>My hopes and dreams dissolved, <br>My soul shrivelled up with all the cruelties<br>To which I was exposed.<br>After the break up of my marriage, <br>I settled in a little village called<br>Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue in Québec.<br>Close by the St. Lawrence river.<br>I raised three very brave children, <br>Now long grown up: <br>And now with children of their own, <br>And I, Nokomis, with sheer joy, <br>Sit and hear their dreams, their tales - <br>I, so proud of their loving parents <br>Who overcame it all. <br>In my sixtieth year, I took <br>the Oath of Citizenship, <br>Swearing allegiance to our Queen, <br>Now so proud to be Canadian: <br>To live in this laid back, <br>Egalitarian land. <br>My restless spirit finally content, <br>Free to enjoy the many gifts<br>God has given me.<br>Great freedom, space.<br>It took me time to understand, <br>To realize there really was a plan.<br>My heart accepts it to be so, <br>That I am finally content<br>Just to be.<br>Sometimes plain words alone<br>Without poetic phrases, <br>Are better able to express<br>Emotional states of being.<br>This is one of these.<br>In fact, simplicity.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Philippa+Lane">Philippa Lane</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=551839" data-title="Ex-Patria de Philippa Lane" data-description="The beginning of the end of our Canadian winter; 
The ending of a British winter, 
And their gentle spring ahead of ours.
I always think about these overlapping seasons, 
In the forty-four years I have lived in Québec. 
 
Yes, Québec and all its..."></div>
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