Persistence of the Reformation

Seen from the high cutting
the sky drifts white cotton
over dance-floors of water
either side the shady creek
that trickles down country
lagoons gummed with water fern

saucepans of wet money
brass polyester gold
couch grass black in swamp
lily dams backed up gullies
and parallel in paspalum
old tillages that fed barns

no one grows patch-crops now
slow-walking black cattle
circle up off cleared flats
past pastel new brick houses
and higher charcoal-barreled
hills are fields of a war

four hundred years of ship-spread
jihad at first called
the Thirty Years War
buff coats and ships’ cannon
the Christian civil war
of worldwide estrangement

freemasons, side massacres
the nun-harem, Old Red Socks
wives “turning” for husbands
those forbidden their loves
bitter chews of an old plug
from Ireland and Britain

while mutual help and space
and breach of cliché and face
here civilized the boundary fences
bigot slurs jostled tempers
right up into the dairy age
new killings back

in cold lanes of the Boyne
shamed it all on the news
among Christmas homecomings
the local dead
still mostly lie in ranks
assigned them by denomination
though belief may say Ask Mum
and unpreached help
has long been the message.