The First Man

Dream into being.

Ancestors eternal,
two giants fraternal,
wielding stone knives.
Upon shapeless bodies,
the All-Father’s follies,
they carve human lives.

Sun Mother!
Wake unborn seeds
to grow,
snakes to bleed
mighty rivers
that quiver and
flow.

The light on the oils,
a spectrum of coils:
Rainbow Serpent.
The storm clouds empowered,
crying orphans devoured,
drowned in its current.

Eaglehawk,
your children slain
by Crow,
split your pain!
Through the brush you stalk,
draped in quills of flame.
Raven dyed in smoke,
entombed birds reborn,
locked in everlasting strife.

Mourn the songs
of times past.

Prisons
engorged with
risen
“savages,”
the first
to forge myths.
Still, thirst
ravages
all.

Proud First People
beneath the steeple
of a white god.
Whole tribes accused,
children abused.
No spared rod.

Terra
nullius,
bearer
of disease.
Slowly
breathe in this
lowly
gasoline
death.

Culture broken,
half-castes stolen,
a mother’s shout.
The flaying of skin,
eugenic sin,
black bred out.

A swallowing torrent
once swept the abhorrent
beneath the foam.
May spirits of rain
rise up once again, to
shape the land we roam.

Uluru,
battle of snakes,
the earth
roused awake
to tremble anew,
a howling mountainous birth.
Demons spawned of mud
sculpt generations in their blood.