The Flags

Into the eucalypt, the wattle and saltbush.
Into the greens the blues the violet hues
Of Robinson’s placentas brush-stroked.

Between the moons
Between the suns
Far from the birth-site now,
Far from the talon of hawk or dove,
From the foot-stomp of jackass and elephant.

Into the red marsupial exoskeleton.
Into the dreaming before the lead awakening.

Into the melting Coral Sea sands,
The burning Nullarbor dirt.
Further than this exiled.

Before the old and new Roman hegemony,
Before the maxim of Thucydides.
Further than this exiled.

And can see the circle whole
Outside of it.

And can see the circle whole,
I, who sung the songs like Merman,
I, who spoke the pledge like Heston.

Came the smiling flag-bearers
With the bright tri-colours
Red-glaring in the fuming classroom.

Came the preachers preaching proof through the night.

Came the lilacs in dooryards blooming
And many a fat man singing praises

Praises and distractions,
So many distractions, my children.

And then the silent boom!

God is the greatest promise man has ever made
To himself the man said as he exploded
In the Nagasaki night.

But this too came later.

What were we to do
We who read the Times and believed in Cronkite,
Marching until the marching came easy?

Have you not seen the Monuments?
Have you not heard America singing?

Into the myth beneath a magpie wing,
Into allegiance with the Thylacinus quietly.

Further than this exiled.

Who can chase the running history,
Catch its makers in the act,
Its scribes scribbling and erasing,
Moving even the mouths of magi?

I know things.

I have seen the sacred photographs
I have decoded Phoenician hieroglyphs
I know indigenous men of colour were,
Were once a nation, once a continent,
Hurled into the myth beyond the circle of remembering,
The red bones congregating mute beneath the reservations

Like the aborigines’ footprints singing
In fading Namatjira mountain shadows.

Even now see how the Tigris floods red in drought,
How Gaza rejoices in its rejected dust
Swirling in the Blackhawk wash

And elsewhere yellow bones still bobbing
In the Mekong creeks
Unreconsiled with sinking singing praises

Praises and distractions.

The crosses resplendent in battalions
The quickly scribbled epitaphs
The quick dumbfounded eulogies
Legion like discarded editors’ pages
Like the loyal memorials to come.

How far, we mean, as the magpie flies?
Just here, the door is here.

Returning to the people all is well
Well beyond the broken borders
Beyond the infinite parallels.
And the flags, my children,

Prolific as immigrants.

© Rhett Talley (October 2004)