Harry Reade, whom green students
called Harry the Bolshie
to his irritation,
argued with libertarians
and savagely with Hungarians
and recited Spanish verbs
while trolleying cadavers
in the School of Anatomy
in a fever to reach Cuba
and fight in the Revolution
since it had taken hold there.
Harry Reade spoke of camping
in hollow logs with his father –
then vanished for ten years
to the Bay of Pigs,
to cartooning for ¡Hoy!
Che and Fidel called him
their kangaroo, their mascot,
but when he wept home
by ship up the Harbour
he’d also cartooned
in Toronto, on the Star.
The Revolution was fine
for getting parasites out
of the bloodstreams of children
but not for the mind,
the life of the mind,
Kangaroo Harry told me.
Ten more years, and he lived
at the Harold Park Hotel
by the dog track, the harness track –
the Harold Park, where poor teens
heard six poets for one beer –
Harry wrote plays for there,
one of Rudd, Steele, caricaturist
hustling a man to the gallows
and the Revolution, ay
¡la Revolucion! was all back,
Bay of Pigs and of Missiles
in its full santería.
Now his ashes would be scattered
on a park in la Habana,
Harry Reade, all alone
and in time it was done.
He led his kindly ash-bearers
past an enormous field
where a running man screamed
threats at them because a child
in their party chewed a cane-stub:
¡Yanquis, sabotajeando el azúcar!
But no, they were Australians,
un veterano, sus cenizas –
and Harry kept his course
in the week that Fidel
conceded his error
in having banned the Beatles.