“Hodo saves lives. I have never once heard him or any of hundreds of new arrivals in Canberra ask what their country can do for them. They give and give, and live their gratitude in a way I’m too selfish to.” ANTONIO DI DIO continues his Short History of Kindness series. 

I picked up a book the other day, on account of having been to the Lifeline book fair at the Fyshwick markets the day before and bought six books but donated 11. 

This put me in front in the one-in, one-out balance sheet so, without guilt, I bought a book of cool, old poems.

Hearing things for the first time is special, but getting them in context for the first time is perhaps even better. This particular book’s conceit was that there are a hundred poems here in English that you don’t think you know, but you actually do. 

And there were a couple from Ted Lasso by Walt Whitman and Philip Larkin (sound like “they tuck you up, your mum and dad”); The Highwaymen as read by Anne of Green Gables, and “Stop all the Clocks”, John Hanna’s oration in Four Weddings and a Funeral that elevated that movie into something more than just a showcase for Hugh Grant’s gravity defying fringe. 

In fact, there’s plenty of great stuff here that connects us through our popular culture, our parent’s quirky interests, or even the titles of our favourite films (from The Grapes of Wrath to No Country for Old Men) to old, beautiful poems. 

Makes me think of a lot of things to be grateful for, really. Our wonderful whimsy columnist Clive Williams wrote recently of Albania. The only connection I have with that country is how it didn’t rain in Sicily in the mid-1930s and my sharecropper grandparents had trouble feeding the 17 kids. 

Nonno went to Albania and Abbyssinia (Mussolini was working his way through the alphabet in the empire-building caper) to make a buck and returned embittered and distressed at his nation’s behaviour, in his cardboard-soled army boots, filthy bandages and missing a kidney. 

My buddy Hodo is from near Albania, one of the amazing migrant flocks Australia constantly takes in, and in 2020, we both lost uncles to covid in those respective countries. Education and opportunity, opportunity and education. Neither of us lost uncles or kidneys in Australia. 

Hodo’s a brilliant surgeon who saves kidneys and lives every day and his stats on rescuing prostates are seriously better than mine for books the other weekend. 

All Hodo and I ever got in Australia was a free education, love, respect, and more shots at a happy life than anyone of our species has had since our earliest grandparents came down from trees.

Part of that joy comes from loved tunes, and I love the fact that some famous songwriters such as Bono couldn’t read music. 

I had the incredible joy of teaching music theory on Tuesday afternoons to my hero Doc Neeson, using the songs he’d written himself. His classic Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again was never used by the nuns when they showed me what a perfect cadence was. Shame, they had the lungs for it. 

It always stuck with me that I could write a pop song ’cause they could, but never the poems I loved. But this here book says that Tennyson, Auden and Dylan Thomas rattled off some of these belters on the backs of envelopes just when they felt inspiration hit. This is a game changer.

It’s craft, sure, but it’s also what’s in your head and your heart right now. This minute. The idea that I don’t have to retire from work, enrol in an English degree and get permission from society to write a poem is more exciting than ELO announcing a world tour of Canberra. 

Where does kindness find its way into this? Forgiving a silly dictator for stealing your health; a nation for rejecting your kind; cruel fate for marking your card. How do you get that strength to do that? 

From the opportunity a new nation gives you, a nation with respect for you and each other. How do you repay them? Well you don’t have to. But if you want to – be the best you. 

Hodo saves lives. I have never once heard him or any of hundreds of new arrivals in Canberra ask what their country can do for them. They give and give, and live their gratitude in a way I’m too selfish to. 

And if there’s a poem inside you – write. There’s probably someone in your past who loves you, and made immense sacrifices, so you could take your best shot at whatever makes you happy. 

Antonio Di Dio is a local GP, medical leader and nerd. There is more of his Kindness on citynews.com.au