for Daniel Syson

“Pasture everywhere is so thin that settlers have already pushed far into the interior: moreover the country further inland becomes extremely poor. Agriculture can never succeed on an extended scale: therefore, as far as I can see, Australia must ultimately depend on being the centre of commerce for the Southern hemisphere, and perhaps on her future manufactories. Possessing coal, she always has the motive power at hand. From the habitable country along the coast, and from her English extraction, she is sure to be a maritime nation.”
Charles Darwin

1) the bush 

			Agriculture can never succeed 
			on an extended scale 

1

	begins with languor, 
the past tense of caress 
which, besides flies & heat haze 
		post stress, 
the intense air supplies — no ostrich feather fans 
or punkahs needed — just to be at rest. 
		a stone that sweats 
(at least that’s how it seems 
			to a mind 
like a cloudy billabong
	trained to believe 
	all floods recede, 
	all breezes die away) 

2
	here, 
the only precision’s / a scribbled 
	gumtree calligraphy, 
so exact against the blue 
it could almost be 
that subtle code 
by which the blacks / could read 
			their country 
		& themselves 
& our scabbed ancestors 
in a shamed rage against complexity, 
killed them off to deny 
			 (Snyder, a terrible 
			bone pointing 
			Martini — Henri, 
				white 
			kaditcha man) 
	“Not killed” they’d say, 
“How do you slay a kangaroo, 
how do you murder a tree?” —
speared cattle the merest —	
“this race, sir 
is finished, 
finished I say!” — speared cattle, 
speared cattle the merest excuse.

3
on a stump 
grubbed up 
or jumped 
tabula rasa, their farms were Platonic 
				like machines 
	but fudged, 
& bodgy like their style: she’ll be right 
they said, 
she’ll be right / but she — wrenched 
		to their scorched 
		& hobbled 
		pastoral —
she wasn’t 
& salt ruins the fertile 
irrigated acres, 
undermines the Memorial Swimming Pool

4 
				for J.K. 

yet we, 
more parasite still / are most like them 
			denying “Australia” 
— weep when you read Hope’s poem 
or Ian Mudie’s 
forgotten catalogue, don’t sneer: 
“You know what’s wrong 
with this place?” 
of Cambridge, England John Kinsella said, 
“you can’t be a dickhead here, 
not for a moment!” 
			“Well” reply 
6 generations plus ring-ins plus me 
“You can always try” 
			mentally hurling 
			half empty cans 
			at dons on bikes 
by greens that centuries of topsoil 
		& power 
	make jewel like
pointless imitating / especially now 
	even Melbourne’s vowels decay 
& the Australian of high (intellectual) degree 
sits, at least ideally, 
in a suburb 
not carved or caressed by the heat, 
		not wearing stubbies 
		in the dust, 
		not sweating 
		after work, 
not under the shade 
    of a Coolibah tree, 
		   asleep. 

2) The First Fleet Asleep 

		and from her English extraction, 
		she is sure to be a maritime 
		nation 

still sitting & 
ex cathedra 
in Speedos & speaking 
from a sweaty, split banana chair, 
				watch 
turbid coils of blue-green algae 
	bloom in the heat / its 
smell plus heavy metal chemicals 
in even the cleanest seeming 
rain forest creek 
			suggest 
The First Fleet’s first mistake—  
		i.e. leaving the beach 
	where cocking their cocked hats, 
		    horse hair wigs 
			or any other 
			    shady take 
on 18th Century sensibility 
e.g. “hands to skylark”
(then collapse) or “Caringbah! 
		that bosky dell!” 
The First Fleet, as if 
in some chaste & English Lusiad 
should have gone to sleep / their pink 
		as yet unzinced pale faces 
snoring beneath each hand made 
idea of shade 
like sail cloth sunhats 
run up from pursers slops / 
		white dreaming maybe leaving 
		convicts scattered 
up & down that protein rich 
but subtle coast: 
at least their offspring wouldn’t be 
		like those famous runaways 
					all Irish 
				Tench notes, 
		     so entertaining setting out 
continually for China, 
200 years too early 
like us, 200 years too late 

3) the beach 
		
		From the habitable country 
		along the coast 

dropped ice—
cream licked 
despite grit 
on your tongue, 
vivid towels & the tang of ozone 
overlaid with cooking oil & sunblock 
			   plus waves & heads 
			bobbing out the back 
constitute, for us at least, 
a synthetic a priori that is a poem 
not like this / 
		a cleaver, preaching 
		    trinket at its best 
— Mine tinkit they fit! —
but the seagull & p.a.’d Top Forty 
punctuated song 
of where we, the overseas Australians,
belong.