Sweeney Dreams He's Having a Nightmare of Clearing

In his dream Sweeney sees himself de-feathered and crashed in the grey sand,

unable to pull himself out of sleep, locked into a nightmare of a bulldozer

running across the land like an electric razor, the entire bush falling

to its gigantic all-encompassing blade. Nothing stops it, not even

the largest jarrah and marri trees, nothing just nothing will thwart

its progress, not even boulders setting their shoulders against

the onslaught. Sweeney in his dream tries to stop the nightmare

in its tracks, and calls on those who have become his friends to help him:

Forgive me for my mis-sayings for my well-meant efforts that have failed.

Forgive me for not spreading my wings wide enough to protect you all.

And with that he rises from the sand and squawks so loud the driver

halts his deadly machine, and leaps down and jabs his finger

into Sweeney’s charred breast, like an image out of a painting

yet to be painted, and says, Now listen, buster, this is how I make

my living, and who are you to take food from my table?! And Sweeney,

feeling the sway of his argument and feeling himself fall back

into the nightmare, sees his own beak moving, hears his own words

tumble past the nub of his tongue in more than mimicry of a human voice:

But when it’s all gone, you’ll have no more work anyway and the world

will be dying. And the bulldozer driver replies, You may be right,

but what would you have me do? — this is my job, and I know no other.

And with this Sweeney wakes, from both dream and nightmare and sweating

and feeling for his feathers to find them black and red and white and intact,

and says: I will fly high and watch over them all, I will fly from grey sand

over gravel and ochre loam and granite and brown clay. And in doing so

he flies past Walwalinj which the colonisers call Mount Bakewell,

and watches the fires the farmers have lit to eat their stubble and chaff

from the last harvest running over their firebreaks into the shreds of bush

remaining from past clearings and past burnings-off, and he watches a digger

knocking down four magnificent York gums —  ancient solar systems

of life — to make a paddock even more vacant, more productive

in the short term, but dead to the future, and he cries and cries

but his tears put out neither the fires nor the work zeal of the clearer

doing a job as night falls, and the kangaroo’s head is renamed

the Southern Cross and the ends of the earth play

on the stereos of machinery and cars and houses

and personal devices. Sweeney

in his dream of a nightmare.

            John Kinsella

Having Given Up the Ghost, Sweeney Flies in With Seedlings to Help Stitch the Wound

A traumatic wound — gashed open to the bone.

But the Emperor and his Jester are up the creek

without a paddle, wading against their own effluent.

A traumatic wound — gashed open to the bone.

The spell feeding on the workers like dermonecrosis

is broken, and they disperse into healthier skin.

A traumatic wound — gashed open to the bone.

Having given up the ghost, Sweeney flies in with

seedlings of native vegetation to help stitch the wound.

A traumatic wound — gashed open to the bone.

In the sand the bushland had grown from, Sweeney

knows country is still alive and consults with the Elders.

A traumatic wound — gashed open to the bone.

It can be healed. Its essence is spilling out like a balm.

The red-tailed cockatoos are thinking of the decades ahead.

            John Kinsella

So let's hope this is the end of the assault on the Beeliar wetlands, and that replanting and healing of the damaged land begins immediately. Of course, for many creatures and much vegetation it is too late. This is a message of thanks and well-wishing to all protesters past and present at the site.

Beeliar Wetlands Protest and Enforcing a Police State

This is part of a sequence of poems I've been working on over the last few years. As some of you will have seen in the news, the Western Australian Premier and Minister for Environment (makes me sick writing that absurd title), and other government enforcers, have had the police out in force to ensure the 'progress' of the destruction of the Beeliar bushland. Photos on the ABC website show a few police; today they had a phalanx of hoplites spread out to ward off the protesters so the attack on the bushland could continue. It's that brutal — it is an act of state violence that must be met with committed pacifist resistance. Non-violent action against the violence of state capitalism.


Sweeney Contemplates a Display of Force by the Police State

Distant now, and working out how to make a return, how to embrace

the wetlands and detrack the machines, Sweeney flew low through the rain

of grasshoppers rising up from the denuded plains, late crops shaking

their seed onto the scorched earth. I will return to the coastal plain,

said Sweeney loud to the parrots, loud to the crows, loud to the mulga

snakes, loud to the grasshoppers. I will stand with the protectors against

the troops of the dictator, against the builder of stadia and his wealthy,

uncouth mates. I will stand against their class pretensions, against their

sporting codes which read a little like the bishop leading an army

against the heathen. I am a heathen, Sweeney told the blue sky

stretched to breaking point; I am old as the earth but can’t even perch

on the outstretched branch of a York gum without feeling guilt. But I will fly

down to the marri, to the blackbutt, to the banksia, to the zamias and grass

trees and ask if I might perch temporarily, temporarily to watch over

the souls of those who dwell there, who know the stories, who connect

constellations with earth itself, who can unpick the codes, the fever

of growth, schematics of belonging. Red-tailed black cockatoos

will guide me in, give me strength.  I will ask to join the lines, speaking

my ancient tongue of respect. I will tell the police they must listen

to the ground through their feet, must listen to the whispering

coming out of the bush where there are as many worlds

as night reveals, spreading its sheet, a future unfurled.

            John Kinsella

Sweeney Encounters a Russian Adventurer in the Avon Valley: a poem by John Kinsella

By John

Sweeney Encounters a Russian Adventurer in the Avon Valley

Sweeney had to do his shopping at Northam Coles.

There was a lot of kerfuffle in the town and more

than a few foreign voices. He was surprised

to find the foreigners were not being attacked

by locals. On his asking why, a teenager stacking shelves

told him, It’s because they’ll only be here for a while.

What was going on? Sweeney took to the airwaves.

Birds of a feather, we might interpolate. Just outside town

he came across a vast balloon being spread out and filled with night.

He swooped down and found a man who looked like

a heavily bearded Dennis Hopper. He caught the name

of this wild man whom he recognised as a holy obsessive.

Almost like me, he said. A Russian. There were many voices

speaking Russian. I know Russian, said Sweeney — I get pictures

wired to my headspace from a poet in his country dacha

every winter, every summer. It’s cold here in winter,

but not as cold as it gets in Russia. That’s the definition of cold

in overheated times. The balloon was filling and the zeal

of the adventurer was palpable. All of this just for him.

His name was Fedor Konyukhov. He was aiming to loop

the earth from sunrise. To smash a record. The media, cloying and clinging,

were saying he sees the world as a place to conquer: mountains,

oceans, everything. Sweeney could see vast swathes of mangroves

dying in the far side of the country but in his gondola Fedor Konyukhov

would fly nowhere near them. Sweeney watched the balloon rise

with the sun, hung around and did a couple of interviews, then flew back

to Coles to finish his shopping. I feel like the stork delivering my own birth,

            he said, adding a few more cans to his stash.

            John Kinsella