Robert James Berry
Settlement
The tide thunders
And lays down like broken courage.
Shingle is stained with seaweed,
Fantastic sea-cut driftwood,
Pulpy matter of summer picnics,
A decayed seabird.
Witness the rusting industry of fishermen
Who smoke in the gossip of snugs now.
I smell them reminisce,
These municipal monuments
That trawl in a lingering tourist at nightfall.
See the woman wrapped in fog
Who waits for the cry of the town clock,
For the bus to the bright centre of things.
Four generations ago
Her ancestors edged along the blustery vein of this
harbour
Which was so like, but not home.
Bogged to their waists in tussock, swamp, wilderness,
They struck at our land. The autumn sunshine was chill.
We bear grudges.
A goods wagon grinds across the points,
Plunges into the cutting behind First Church
As the iron mandibles of the container hoist
Cast their insect shadow into Main Street.
At the breakwater the Southern Ocean rumbles.
Headlands shove at a swell
Which remembers no history.
The town stills. Only we stir,
The dispossessed chiefs and masters,
Gruff, like thistles in the wind.
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Page(s) 47-48
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