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<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A Culture That Fulfils<\/strong><\/span> by David Betteridge<\/em><\/p>\n The compassion of the oppressed for the oppressed<\/em> John the Jellyman came to my door; He had a gift for me today, a jar Labour intensive: The apples came, he told me, The sloes he harvested Meanwhile, elsewhere, but all too near, The sum of the world\u2019s wrongs weighs John the Jellyman, come again A Culture That Fulfils by David Betteridge The compassion of the oppressed for the oppressedis indispensable\u2026 I beg you, take the spadeand not the knife.\u00a0 \u00a0 –…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":380,"featured_media":14949,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1660],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/380"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/em><\/p>\n
is indispensable\u2026 I beg you, take the spade<\/em>
and not the knife.\u00a0 \u00a0 – <\/em>Bertolt Brecht<\/p>\n
John, a.k.a. the Wine- and Vodka-man,
or John the Cheese, or Leek, or Bean,
depending on the time of year;
John, near-neighbour, pensioner,
and practitioner of a gentle creed.<\/p>\n
of jelly that he\u2019d made from wild apples
and wild sloes;
and he brought me kindness, too,
asking Was I well and Was there any help
that I might need?<\/p>\n
that\u2019s what his jelly is,
with days spent in the country,
sourcing the fruits required,
and hours in the kitchen,
achieving the sweet and bitter balance
and the viscosity
desired.<\/p>\n
from an avenue of trees
that run beside a disused railway track.
These are trees grown from the pips
in apple cores
that long-dead passengers had tossed
out through the carriage windows
as they passed.<\/p>\n
from a low-leaning blackthorn copse,
shaped by prevailing winds from off the sea.
It yielded its copious berries easily to John,
as to any forager who goes that way,
as John, in turn, gave his labour\u2019s fruits
to me.<\/p>\n
there are other men, in essence like our kindly John,
but rendered so unlike by ill-division,
fear and hate, and history.
Too readily, they visit their own neighbours\u2019 doors
and lands, bringing not gifts or help
but the burn and bomb and bleed and maul and rape
et cetera of war.<\/p>\n
the world\u2019s imbalance down, and further down.
When will the world\u2019s peoples rise,
resist, rethink, and organise?<\/p>\n
and knock my door; come any time.
You restore in part my heart and hope
for our poor conflicted humankind.
From your example, I infer that a brain
and hand that has learned to kill
might also learn to build –
given a better place and time –
a people\u2019s culture that fulfils.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"