The Stations had been painted by Sisters from Mainz and Bavaria,
the sort who seized children to educate and ran hands-on leprosaria
when leprosy was AIDS, but less pitied. The Carpenter who
taught Oscar Wilde, and millions before him too,
that the opposite of a platitude is more likely true
moves through sheets of action that are echoing with energy, like Munch
but often stronger, till he tilts like a plank off a shed
in hue and rigour, with one arm hinged hanging, dead
and helplessly ready to stand all death on its head.
Dampier peninsula, named for a pirate who hated the place,
had no kangaroos to stand with handcuffed paws and belly-face,
no emus, no sheep, but featureless termite men instead.
We lunched under tamarinds planted by some Macassar crew
to refresh them when harvesting the sea, as most peoples there do.
If Australia is part of Asia, as some fervently declare,
why were we never kamponged, paddied, pagoda'd from there?
It was Europe's blood-watering let Asian Australia take root.
We had sights of more sites, and bought tourist stuff as the tribute
such trips vaguely exact. I had wanted to visit Tunnel Creek
and WolfCreek crater, where huge iron in full spacefall
treated Earth like tar; one mile-wide ripple forms a ring-wall.
Those will have to wait. Instead, our hospitable week
next saw us in Kununurra where, Israel again, the dry earth
is
irrigated to supply winter vegie markets, in this case Perth.
There we cruised on a river perennially full to the brim,
that old Outback longing; we heard of Stumpy Michael, of Kim,
and where we landed to buy stuff a square-bearded crow
perturbed our spirits with its wire-prisoned frantic
Hello.
And far trees meshed antennae along the ridgelines, like ants;
the sunset, like all the light, was factual; I felt underdreamt.
Chemicals were imprinted with catfish, spouses, cormorants -
how naturally random recording edges into contempt.
Kind people explained about Development and suicide;
which race drank indoors, and which is seen drunk outside.
The lost sounded not dissimilar, whatever their skin.
I saw no squalour. Some houses looked lived around, some in.
It
was still four-wheel-drive country. Artifacts and lean beef
were the style, not muddied tractors. No pub was called the Sheaf
Then past inverted trees and umber hills with slopes of pale cowhair
we were off to Purnululu, the Bungles, to camp two nights there.
