looks over the waters and beckons to me
And the cliff tops all sparkle, and tinkle and twinkle
with tinsel and bells and such sweet liberty
And they suffer the poor, the wretched the hungry
and the lamp light will welcome a lost refugee.
The country I come from is silent and broken,
the songlines forsaken our colour expunged.
Our speech is in wires that burn in the white light,
our thoughts are the whispers of words on the run.
The song of the ocean is soft and beguiling
an insistent lover it calls through the night
Come sail on my breast I bring hope to the hopeless
Come sail on my breast through the dark to the light
They suffer the poor there, the wretched the hungry
and a porch light will glow for a sad refugee.
A sullen flotilla slips out on the
river
it aches with this commerce of
humankind.
And who among you would huddle in place
there
as one after one they come and they come
with fear of the jolt, and the clump
and the roll
as the fates bestir and the balance tips
and a pitch on the axis turns hope into horror
and a pitch on the axis turns hope into horror
in this endless procession of future eclipsed?
stillborn and those signs whip and crack:
Stop The Boats. Turn Them Around. Send Them Back.
Christ sups his tea. Suffer the sacred, the children who come.
