So, within limits of fire, conflagrated
on edge to listen to wind that stirs
and feeds, they keep their shops
and plan an Australia without homosexuals,
regarding their sun-blocked bodies
as licence to tread where those relishing
punishment are truly condemned: the purgated
become the tormented in their ministries.
So, with tolerance, they spray unseasonal
weeds with poison, as if it was winter
but with heat. And encircling the district
they meet each other with assurances
of their goodness, paying homage
to the sun for tans that don’t turn cancerous.
Faith is an order for new plant and equipment,
despite the Wheat Board’s under-the-counter
payments to the regime they’d fight
with the teeth of their own children.
And so, in darkness, all are rendered equal,
headmaster removing grace’n’favour
from Nyungar children: ‘give them lunch money
and they just go down town and spend
it on smokes…at this school, all my children
are equals’…The order for removal to Moore River?
That was eighty years ago. ‘It’s a modern
integrated fair-go kind of community I’m fostering.
I too have experienced racism. I’m in a position to know…’.