Poem for Port Arthur

 

... where the cricket ground still shines like a brass thingummy

on an eager ensign's jacket

and muslin waves lap irony at the stone.

Diana never came here, but it doesn't matter.

By '96 romantic stories had long given way

to Convict Barbie and the Pentax Penitentiary.

This is a history of the urge to make a quid

and its consequences. Alf Maule would tap

with his walking stick the very spot on the flags

which a deed apocryphal even to Marcus Clarke

had stained. Alf and the other guides had the patter

as glib as a politician's response to massacre.

One of them, Jim MacArthur, had burned down the church

then made a living describing its remains.

 

Interpretation has always been the problem.

No wonder, when the press needed to doctor

electronically the killer's eyes. As if

the memory of picnic outings by steamer

for charitable causes wasn't enough.

 

Sunlight on the green or the weather off Cape Raoul

huge as empire: we still deny it all,

waiting for the next son et lumiere, which will descend

like a princess.