States of Poetry
There was never an explanation
as to why he walked into the river,
took hold of a log
and floated away.
They found letters
but the love he expressed
in sometimes obsessive detail
was no explanation –
except, the coroner declared
that perhaps it indicated
'a lack of a grasp', etc.
Someone who saw him pass by
said that he was waterlogg ...
This cardboard prison they call an archive
is cold, airless and silent as death.
Floor to ceiling boxes contain voices
no longer heard yet still wailing within
and faces no longer seen yet still missing in a
jail of captured snippets, images and memories
like the severed heads and bleached bones of
dismembered bodies neatly locked away in the vaults
of mu ...
As a new century dawned white Australians were urged
to feel comfortable and relaxed about their history.
'Shake off that irksome black arm band – legacy of radical
lefties who can't leave well enough alone – and their
tiresome chant that white Australia has a Black history and
we all have blood on our hands.
We've got a new song to sing now!'
Right win ...
For Garry Papin and the Muthi-Muthi People of Lake Mungo
Lady Mungo heard the white scientists trampling
on her people's sacredness and she began to surface –
to speak.
While you archaeologists are stomping on
our graves arguing about the depth of your
new Pleistocene layer my people already know
the ...
For Patrick White (1976)
When the Badtjala people discovered Eliza Fraser,
her story of cannibals devoured a history.
A century later when the Badtjala people
rescued Ellen Roxborough on the fringes of paradise
White's imagination captured the Aborigine –
the Blacks – for the nation.
When she ate Badtjala woman's flesh,
she ...
Whitefellas have a license to stare in
car parks, foyers, forums and gatherings at
anybody else who doesn’t look white.
They’re famous for asking Blackfellas
where we come from even though they
belong to the oldest diaspora of all. ...
I dip my finger in its redness –
a little wild honey for you
& a little for me,
beloved.
Each letter bears
the unmistakable scent,
the iron perfume,
the dreams of lung,
vein & the battlefield.
At the window,
trembling,
befriending trees & cats with ...
The desert dreams of harvest,
of holy writ & rain.
The city dreams of ruin,
of upturned cars
& vine-dressed churches.
The tiger dreams of freedom,
of shaking loose the stake & chain
& racing into shadows
large enough to hold it.
But me?
I dream of you.
There was a time we collected
dolphin's teeth
&a ...
I
Having narrowly escaped jetlag,
I ate a mushroom omelette
in Galata Square,
with wrinkled black olives
on the side
&nbs ...
One day,
after it has died,
we will hold a vigil for the moon.
We will burn candles,
cheap mimics of its light,
& utter prayers we forgot to utter
while it still lived.
And we will say,
'Remember how it
spoke to us its bone-coloured dreams?
Remember how it gave us hope
when all else seemed savage?'
And some will say it was ...