Heritage

Whaling off Fremantle,
blood on the beach
where the Round House mimics
the night sky's sphere;
bleeding of whales
where the stained sea creeps
to lick its own pink wounds -
blood on the beach
where sleek dark shapes
reduce to lumps of blubber,
as savage men with flensing knives
replenish tallow vats.

Blood on the sand, Pinjarra Hills
resound to Stirling's raiders,
as savage men with sticks-spit-fire
exterminate "black vermin" -
blood on the sand, where devil-dingoes
sing the white-faced moon to see
how still dark forms on the hills' pale ribs
lie in congealing blood, past healing.


Pinjarra women lamenting
the Western wind, the widow-maker
that brings bad-spirit men who ride
the magic beasts called horses;
in the folded hills, of a fireless night,
Pinjarra women, wailing.


*
first published in 1987, in 'Hecate',
University of Queensland, Australia.

* * *

This poem arose out of a visit
to Fremantle, Western Australia,
while attending a women's peace
camp at Cockburn Sound in 1984.
I was struck by the way that,
soon after the arrival of British
settlers, the fate of the sea's
inhabitants coincided with the
fate of the land's indigenous
people. Both were slaughtered.