When I came back
after almost a month away
a wild wind had damaged the roofs of the neighbours’ houses
and brought down the cherry laurel in our yard
and there was a fine layer of dust over everything: dust
in the cupboards, dust in the drawers, dust beneath the dried, cut roses,
the dust of our neighbours, the dust of the city, the dust
of the Simpson Desert
two thousand kilometres west.
What’s there to say?
Sometimes, as I talk, I feel the dust
creeping through my sentences, thoughts
turning to fine powder
as they wend through the motes of it:
theories, philosophies, histories. Our dreams
are dust, our loves
are dust, the things
we fight for are dust.
In the Taj Mahal
they are sweeping the dust; in the Pentagon,
the Vatican. In the Louvre
they are brushing it
from the face of La Gioconda. In Padna
Emeliano is ploughing the dust; on the Hay Plain the sheep
are straggling through dust; in Canberra
the Prime Minister is coughing
because of the dust.
In the evening the dust
turns red in the sunset: there are
worlds up there,
and centuries, huge
cathedrals, great
archives of dust.
Sometimes,
when the wind dies,
you can hear the birds
crying
because of their burden of dust: crying
or singing, I don’t know (the world
flows
through the dust of us,
sometimes it sings).