A crackling morning.
Crisp orders are issued on the edges of the cove.
A torpid grey gull hangs on a heat-bar in the blue
above the head of a statue of a man called Arthur
Phillip.
Marble pale, bewigged, he is a statue of a man.
There a rude red ensign that wears a union jack,
wilts on a sail-less mahogany vessel.
Some distance off, a kingfisher, on a branch, red,
white and blue feathered, flinches,
to see a long, hardened-by-fire spear, set with
teeth, whistle through the air into the pasty white
back of a European poor devil,
taken, bless us, naked under a hot antipodean sun.
Runts of men, small weary convicts, pus-faced, weep a
little blood.
Their backs bleed as do the backs of their eyes.
Some cats with nine tails jig about, do a dance in
the air, like butterflies.
Rufous soldiers sweat up, itch badly in heavy melange
uniforms.
Have a good scratch, fellers.
It's a marvel all this.
Marvellous to trace spoors of strange marsupials, and
to watch, edgy-eyed, heavy scattering squatters,
those who plant stiff-leather boots onto the land,
any land they care for, or not care for.
'Spread out,' says the beneficent governor, bis dat
qui cito dat, one arm uplifted, aping a statue he
once admired.
Far back in the black brush of the bush, whites of
eyes roll.
Wallaroos and pademelons and marsupial bears and
aborigines are trepidatious and thrilled by it all.
What a fine, very fine, first Australia Day this has
turned out to be. |