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ARTS AND CULTURE

Three poems from the Centre

  • 07 August 2006
The second and third poems are anonymous. 1. Please let him be a bird in this land To Daggie Sheltens, detainee in Baxter for seven years The sea is a boat on his dream The darkness at the shore embraces Its journey to a new land His visa is only a wave without a name. Baxter, desert of long sentences Locked up his youth Now his eyes are broken wings Now his heart is a cloud in a cage at the detention centre. He knew where he was in that white room He crashed his dream with a native tree in Glenside's hospital His mind is a wounded hope for all within the wire desert Within the white room His mind is a bird without air or sky to fly Please let him be a bird in this land 2. Woomera burns Exultant, in the flames he sees the ribs of the long ships that bear the names of all the seas he crossed. He hears the horns that laud his deeds. Men come with hose and batons. 3. Woomera Around the fence they're burning off. A robin, dusty tail and crimson breast, picks at the ashes. Entranced, a child looks on. Over the wire flies the robin, alights upon a soft, green bush. Towards the bush rushes the child and, thwarted by the wire, howls as if her life were ending. Her mother also screams, running forward, followed by a guard. With arms stretched out, the child runs towards her mother, past her mother, to the turnkey who alone can let her fly beyond the wire.
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