Sing enthusiastically

Sing enthusiastically

‘This land is our land…this land was meant for you and me.’

Without irony

Thanking first nations for allowing it to be repurposed

Building privilege into private schools

The poor can only aspire to

When wealth creation only favours the few

Does colonialism ever end

When will anything ever truly be ours,

Perhaps when taxes don’t go abroad

We can have a tea party.

Will there come a time

When we really own anything

Beyond our own actions

Pulling a plough over dry earth

Planting our kin in the ground

Praying for the prospect of a good harvest

Year after year

As the crops fail

When rivers are rerouted

To wash coal from open cast mining

To be shipped around the globe

Where factories darken the sky

With the shadow of pollution

As we dig graves for the fallen

Nobody grieves for the faceless

Too many people move on

Putting the past behind them

In a blank expression of brotherhood

Too easily exploited

Dying in droves for their homeland

As vultures wait in the wings

To devour the carcass

There is too much sadness

Barely registered as a loss

Unless it is experienced

First hand

Pull that plough my good strong boy

Dig that trench

Plant yourself deep into the ground

It is your very own plot

What that really means

Is not a mystery to the brokenhearted

Barely surviving guilt

Who move at differing speeds

In different directions

Trying to catch up with themselves

As heroes

Growing into their part of history

When all the land you can see is our land

All the way from the far distant mountains

Standing out, blue-grey against a big sky

To the shores of great oceans

With more depth than meaning

And none of it ever worth having

Soaked as it is

In the bloody cost of its liberation