Selected poems
Abbot Point
This rough field of sudden war —
This and going down to the sea,
going down.
— L. Durrell, 'Near El Alamein'
One man, a suited clown
took into the House of Discourse,
a piece of coal, its darkness
shimmering,
not quite the diamond
it might become. It was his
talisman, part of his conjuring
trick, now you see it, now
you don't, and he tricked them,
made some of them guffaw,
slap their sides, tears streaming
down. Not unlike the wives
and the faithful in small cottages
near collieries as they prepared
their prone loved ones, who
somehow tricked the owners,
sucked in the precious mineral
dust, deep in the tunnels
of their lungs.
Not quite tears of laughter,
more of hopelessness, ignorance,
powerlessness, or tears of
resignation about bright dreams
clouded over by coal dust
and dark shadows.
Somewhere on the sub-continent,
the master, Maharajah of the clown
has visited, with his emissaries
and all due ceremonies, one of the
Nabobs, Gautam Adani, a miner
of the black diamonds, whose empire
has spread like a malignant organism
across princely states, salute states,
foreign lands across the waters.
Our Maharajah bears gifts, embossed
letters of recommendation, entreaties,
supplications, as he offers to smooth
the pathways of his own empire,
to weave and to lay long
strings of shining steel across fragile
lands, wastelands, so that black diamonds
may be trucked and railed to the
pristine ocean's edge for shipment.
He offers the future, a timeline that
will stretch past both their lives,
a cornucopia to please and appease
a Nabob whose only endearment is
his widening smile,
his open cut handshake
and eyes deeper than
any piece of dark carbon,
and harder.
We the untouchables who line
the roadway will build the railway
and tug our forelocks,
even our cocks if asked,
will disbelieve the stories
of a dying reef, and will surf
the bow waves of the big transport
ships that will steam across
what were pristine reefs,
their maritime line stretching across
the next decade and out of sight.
To kill
Three pesky parrots in the grass,
bright green caps, yellow scarf
of a stripe, hint of iridescence,
bobbing in the long green, just
returned from robbing the grove,
declared pests.
Surreptitiously I crept behind
bushes as a pair of them were
lined up like ducks at a fair,
found the angle. Two for the
price of one. The third went
into the high branches, curious,
still, frozen, but out of range,
more curious and down again
to its mates, still wondering at
their stillness?
One more successful shot.
Anzac Remembrance Day
today, uniforms, medals,
marches, flags and bunting,
conflict a century gone.
Arms presented across
the country to drum rolls.
Wars of black and white days,
There are still some being fought
today, so we are in the past,
in the present, the narrative
never ceases, just a change of
uniforms, livery, geo-political
zone.
I was never recruited, nor
conscripted, chance is a