Remember Ronald Ryan Page 11

  My pulse which has been legally returned to its rightful owner!

  Imagine that!

  Having your life handed to you on a plate of fresh favour!

  The Government finds it in their heart to favour Ronald Ryan!

  And out into oxygenated hope go I!

  With my body unbroken and my kids back with Daddy!

  And I’d like to place a sprig of forgiveness on George’s new-dug grave!

  By God that is the very first thing on my list!

  And place fresh flowers not stolen on the guards’ new-dug graves!

  I would remember them who died for me

  Even their bullet shells from the towers were swept well out of sight

  But I saw them all glitter on the baking hot twisted tram rails

  And I heard all their bangs literally

  Now it is certainly a minute to go and they lead me up and down

  Which in death is the same thing of course

  I have been saying my prayers

  I have been a good boy

  I have been patiently waiting for the telegram to flit in the iron door

  I have even hallucinated on the flit of it and the life it contains

  But it came leaving nothing but the power of despair

  Like the everlasting seal of disapproval

  Because the Cabinet didn’t like me much

  And realised I could win the 1967 Victorian State election for them

  With my marginal swinging seat

  It’s quite funny now but I’m unafraid of life or politics

  Are they the same thing—in my case certainly!

  The twelve journalists are all drunken watching down there below by gum!

  They think it’s going to be terribly exciting or even fun or dramatic

  But it’s business as usual for D Division where I die now and don’t come back not once

  The hangman tugs my rope roughly and my tinnitus kicks in something shocking

  They drop a linen hood over my face that’s had a Dad and Dave

  The mumbo jumbo of the Catholic bullshit and I am faithfully despatched to memory

  And Father Brosnan listens faithfully to my pounding-away heart beating like mad

  Over two hundred strokes a minute he says later to his brother a bookie

  ‘You should have had a bet on it!’ says his bookie brother and they laugh and do a bottle

  It beat so powerfully of its own volition for twenty minutes as I hung there all black in the dial

  Then I was hurled in the quicklime and even now there’s no grave for Ryan

  But they won the vote all due to me

  If they dig me up again I’d gladly do it again for the Liberal Party

  They’ve got my vote now

  I tell you that for nothing

  Listen my dear friends of the Theatre of Imprisonment right here

  You can hear the mermaids in Bass Strait if you sit perfectly still and respectful

  And so forth and so fifth

  And they will sing for me.

  THE END

  Copyright Details

  CURRENCY PLAYS

  Remember Ronald Ryan first published in 1994

  This edition first published in 2014

  by Currency Press Pty Ltd,

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  First digital edition published in 2014 by Currency Press Pty Ltd.

  Copyright: Introduction © Barry Jones, 2014; Remember Ronald Ryan © Barry Dickins, 1994; Ryan © Barry Dickins, 2014.

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  Any performance or public reading of Remember Ronald Ryan or Ryan is forbidden unless a licence has been received from the author or the author’s agent. The purchase of this book in no way gives the purchaser the right to perform the plays in public, whether by means of a staged production or a reading. All applications for public performance should be addressed to the author c/- Currency Press.

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