And so, entering the property from Ensign Dale Court,
it’s hard to determine our whereabouts, driving into sunset,
east-west road, driveway perpendicular, wavering
only slightly from the axis. Once there, careful to find
exact point of entry, a lament can be heard
in static, like glaringly different channels
dropping in and out at the same point
on the dial: ‘Fewer and fewer prayers for me now,
though the State would make them more so…
Proceeding recommence start proceed follow
direction ascend thickly-wooded bivouac sunrise
bird’s-eye view elevated I’d seen from mountain
bluish vapour eastward journey His Excellency
musk duck native wigwam fires natives
friable nature as fast as their legs
could carry them beautiful bivouac
luxuriant agricultural grazing precipitous
horses distance terminating excursion
mode travelling limestone profusion
flowers red fruit stone novel and singular
seed vessels…’ and I ask who, whose lament
is burnt by the sun’s concentrated, dying flame,
who succours beneath the dead grey arching York gum,
who has his face in the dirt, who steps backwards
at granite’s narrow passageways, whose eyes
are fixed on the sun, burnt blind, unable to quench
what he so adores, who leans on the shade
of others I recognise, their shapes horse blankets
of this proposed equine precinct? ‘I am the shade of R. Dale.
Ensign of the 63rd Regiment. Soldier. Explorer.
Travelling companion to the head of the warrior Yagan—
anthropological curiosity I offered to sell for twenty pounds.
I let Thomas Pettigrew party out on it in London, guests
picking up copies of my pamphlet, “Descriptive Account
of the Panoramic View &c. of King George’s Sound
and the Adjacent Country…” to remember me by.’
In the overlap of fates, the young warrior Walwalinj
comes together with the girl Wongborel cross-valley
as time ends, sealed together by night.
Locked to their terraces, scrabbling for the summit,
I hear explorers and farmers lamenting: ‘Why do they
move so freely?’ The Wagyl cuts impervious
rock of shadow with a differing register
of light and dark. Chaotic and fractured
gum bled from dead York gum
reflects our labours, inflects the rates we pay.
The Keates brothers, murderers of Yagan, are far
from here. But those who smoked his head
in a stump fuelled by eucalypt leaves for three months,
a long way down river, can be heard lamenting,
the growing suburbs blocking out the little light left,
traffic taking them worldwide to see remnants
of world’s dead. Chewed hemisphere
of split tennis ball barely glimmers by the clothes line.