Here are 11 lines of poetry that are not my own, but instead are by a New Zealand poet called A.R.D. Fairburn.

from Dominion

Utopia

III

In the suburbs the spirit of man

walks on the garden path,

walks on the well-groomed lawn, dwells

among the manicured shrubs.

The variegated hedge encircles life.

In the countryside, in shire and county,

the abode of wind and sun, where clouds trample the sky

and hills are stretched like arms heaped up with bounty,

in the countryside the land is

the space between barbed-wire fences,

mortgaged in bitterness, measured in sweated butterfat.

I transcribed this from An Anthology of Twentieth Century New Zealand Poetry edited by Vincent O'Sullivan.