Five Threnodies for Maralinga: Part III

When they came to Juldil Kapi,

called Juldi, called Ooldea Soak,

the United Aborigines Mission,

in Jeeps and covered trucks

they looked like moon men.

Soldiers everywhere,

the older ladies recalled.

Guns. We all cry, cry, cryin’.

Time enough to pack a dilly bag

of clothes, a framed photograph,

a child’s favorite toy,

before the trucks rolled out,

leaving mission buildings to heat

and swallowing dunes.

And she, between soldiers,

on those hard troopie seats,

secretly fingers a stone

held deep in the pockets of her skirt—

nulu stone, she thinks, last fragment

of the meteor.

Its dust colors her skin.

A hundred kilometers to the south

departing helicopters drop leafets

written in English

warning Aboriginal people

to not walk north.

But here on the savannah,

groups of figures separate in spinifex.

And later, when sky pressed toward them

like a wall, they laid their bodies

over their children

and rose again coated in tar.

Soldiers found them sleeping

in the Marcoo bomb crater.

They gave them showers

and scrubbed their fingernails.

But in the months that followed

their women gave birth

               to dead babies, to babies

               without lungs, babies without eyes,

and their men speared kangaroos

they couldn’t cook

because they were yellow inside.

Judith Crispin