And where have all the anti-nuclear peace protesters gone?
Apexing
As the propaganda
unfurls to make a complaisant
audience even more pliable,
we hear of the unsighted
sonar world of insight
into the call of whales,
the sea creature speech
that is a privilege to eavesdrop
on, to warm the soul
the deeper and colder
it gets. ‘Brothers and sisters’
in the new regime, precise
as torpedoes, concise
as thirty-second showers,
intimate as cramped
living conditions in which
‘sex’ is off the menu (‘steak
and lobster’ is on). The massaging
of reception as the Virginia-class
fast-attack submarine USS Minnesota
slips in to ease the transfer
of nuclear reactors
so friendly to oceans
and surface, to all that earth
is and will no longer be.
Rockingham hugs the ‘apex
predator’, Fremantle hugs
the apex predator, Perth
hugs the apex predator.
Don’t call these places
by their Indigenous names
in such a context as this —
those names are forever
and not temporary.
Where have the protesters
gone? Where have the flotillas
of peace boats sailed? As easy
as economics the safety
of world as we know it in
back yards, front yards, down
the street, across the water,
high up in the tainted atmosphere.
John Kinsella
