A
New Ode to Westralia: Anthem for All Future Sporting Events
The state is killing our souls
The state has murdered the people — some
they murder over and over
The state has deployed vicious antibodies
to kill the good cells
and
let the infection thrive
The state has equated work with destruction
and manipulated
the outcome — remember,
the state has no love for unions.
The state deployed its shock troops who
watched on as poems were yelled
at
them, their commander marshalling attitude, saying: how can we
shut
this one up? Poets of the world, take notice. They will close
you
down the moment you break free of your anthologies,
your
safety in pages of literary journals, the comforts
of
award nights.
The state shapes itself out of the dust
rising from underforest
which
is its soul exposed to a caustic, toxic atmosphere
made
by so many other such actions of malice — the shape
is
cartoonish to start with, then like a Hollywood effect
then
just terrifying ectoplasm feeding on sap and blood and grit.
The state chips and mulches because it has
heard rumours of Plato’s
theory
of forms and thinks it needs a new translation full of local
business
inflection, full of their own brand of ‘civilisation’.
The state has no intention of letting
traditional owners maintain
traditional places
of worship of culture of belonging — it’s always
been about the
twin poles of denial and deletion.
The state has reservoirs of species names
and the odd pressed sample
of
a flower they wish only to remain as a Latin name and
a collectible, gathering
in worth, which is the essence of market
economics, rolling
on through the bushland with gung-ho
in-your-face finality.
The state wants you to gasp as the tall
tree cracks and is brought down fast,
the
pair of tawny frogmouths lifting to nowhere, dazzled by daylight.
John
Kinsella
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