On an island off an island
land hangs from land
by a rope of sand:
this epitome of peninsula,
this penal colony's
penal colony's
penal colony.
[Colonic, as in irrigation,
this is where it all hangs out,
daggy as shitballed sheep].
Here even Terra Nullius
tails off into Nowhere.
And to say, of course, it's nullius
is to say that they're No-One:
shy figures, wallflowers,
the shadows of unhandy men
immured in the Garden of Diemen.
Nothing between here and the Southern Pole.
Nothing to stop waves from far west
as Cape Town get up some speed,
build walls of water, big, big seas.
And just where is here when here
is constantly swept past?
Roaring Forties.
The very day we landed upon the fatal shore,
The planters they stood around us, full twenty score or more;
They ranked us up like horses and sold us out of hand,
They roped us to the plough, brave boys, to plough Van Diemen's Land.