Requium For A Working Girl Poem by Thomas Golding

They called you junkie, hooker, liar, and thief
All true.
You fantasised your past
Forgetting that I knew you
When you came to the scene
Leaving home and child
To make some money.

'Not long' you said.

It wasn't long before
You boasted of the habit
Acquired to spend the cash.
Not the other way about
As later make believe.

You used to care.
Later pride had gone
Along with greater need for funds
To feed that child of Morpheas
Once thought so tame.
Uncaring that the highs
Were raptures of the deep.

Yet there was that starving pregnant cat
You took in and nursed.
Were those tears I saw as she fed her young?
If you loved yourself
As you did that uncared-for beast
You would have had no need to cry
Or have your friends despair.

Overshadowed undermined and lost.
Spill a tear for me my dear
For my presumption died as well
When you embraced that child of dreams.
One last high, one last crest.
Was I a fool seduced by hope to dig
Within the lightening blasted tower
For that lost child within?
Logic pushed aside by need
Yours or mine to contemplate?

'Not long' you said.


Your friends are here
To take your things away.
Judge them gently
They mourn for you as well.
Those who earn no tears on passing
Have not truly lived in this world.
Do not mind if they weep a little for themselves.
Or that they follow custom
Which strips it's fallen kind
To live another day
Uncaring of our ancient laws
Some at least walk away in shame.

You were no saint, but worse than you
Were those who paid a blood-price for your body
As easement to a conscience loosely kept
Whilst they travel to and from
Their cloistered villas
Where true to the canons of mendacity
They debate declining moral standards
With the partners they betray.
Useless rhetoric then as now
Another will judge the greater treason
Leave the darkness now for morning
Child of sunrise seek your love.


Pikia atu te ara kite Rerenga Wairua.
Arohanui Karen.