THE KITCHEN TABLE

There a lots of things wrong with Australia today,

And I would like to have something to say, if I may

You know for sure the problem with youth,

Untidy, ill mannered, untamed and uncouth,

It's the fact that the home life is often unstable,

And it's all for the lack of a kitchen table.

Remember how once we would sit down as one,

And would say grace when the carving was done.

Our own serviettes from our own special rings.

The elders would tell us of custom and fable,

When we all sat around our kitchen table.

They are now building mansions with four car garages,

Our working lives mortgaged to interests and charges

There’s less time at home for the tea to be made,

And it is seldom today that the table is laid.

There's room after room under roof-peak and gable,

But there's not enough room for a kitchen table.

At the weekends the parents are chauffeurs unpaid.

No wonder they are tired and their tempers frayed

As they ferry their broods to arenas of sport,

Where the culture of winning is intensively taught.

And there's more on the telly, both free and by cable,

So there's no time to talk around the kitchen table.

Karl Marx called religion the drug of the people,

But there's scant regard now for the church or the steeple.

Just giv’em more sport and don’t let them think,

And keep them away from the kitchen sink.

We'll give more sport and the Culture of Babel,

The throw-away culture that threw out the table.

With ubiquitous coke and their baseball caps,

There’ll soon be no fellers, no blokes, no chaps.

When they all dress the same then it's little surprise.

That the birds swear as much and as foul as the guys.

So we grandparents must, just as long as we're able.

Keep our culture alive round the kitchen table

F. W. Brazier Poem