Midnight's boxer

Midnight's boxer He has become That the ghosts from the ‘tents' of long-ago pay homage Memories that fill a boarding-house room, Busted knuckles soothed endlessly with goanna oil And on the soul, scars that can't! Stories in his eyes: I could have been an Olympian?! But try and extract the malice from his fists; He wouldn't know how to sink in the ‘boot', A tender honour picked-up off the battlefields of assimilation, Midnight's boxer He has become Fifty-seven-year-old gas tank that can't see empty Blackened skin like blackened memory And hard, plain hard! The unrecognized pillar of his mob, And after midnight has gone, way gone, And his time is over Will he be missed and his triumphs mentioned? Midnight's boxer he has become . . .