When I buy a bun
I buy a shadowed world,
Lit by sunlight,
Dark with shadowed sunlight.
Wavering corn I buy
Bushes of bright currants
Tall cane and spices
Butter from green fields.
I see the gathering
Gold corn and purpled berries,
Dark spices, syrup crystals
Cream in the pan.
Dark holds of ships
Seething souls of toilers
Darkness of the town night
Around the bakery.
Beetles and the soft
Death-dealing
Dust of fine flour
Stealthily streaming
Into the life breath
Of the baker.
When I buy a bun
I buy a world, sun-shadowed.
(Dorothy Richardson.)
Notes
From the Queensland Newspaper The Courier-Mail 4 Jan 1934 p. 15.
Another example of the biting vernacular verse of the 1930's Great Depression.
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