Harmonium
Sandspit at low tide
taloned in the lower reaches
of the Swan River
as the atmosphere condenses
to a single spark, a son et lumière
entertaining only itself
as upstream they fill in just a little
more of the river, burgeoning freeways
forcing their pylons deeper into
the settlement's sludge,
knocking on the door
of landbridges that link
the place with Empire:
that up there, beneath the fens,
they find buffalo and lion,
elephant and rhinoceros,
and poets are offered residencies
at museums, oblivious
of the subterfuge: but all of this
is off the map and everything
leaps for th'Antarticke world
into the sky, as from here they
head to Bali or India,
in search of temples and karma,
lomatel taken regularly
and also consistent doses
of anti-malarial concoctions,
in their busy search for pleasant fruites
as if the world is hypertextual;
so too in language of the primal,
linking druids to the Wagyl
and claiming kinship,
like domesticating the dingo
and talking of pedigrees,
while the sand paintings spiral—
not vanishing but rearranging endlessly
at least to the poetic eye.
So this sandspit, or at high tide
"sandbar", that'd grip the hull
of a drunken sailor's yacht,
or catch a corpse drifting
up for the harbour,
might well be the inverted
signature of a sluice
draining excess water
from the shire, as drought
addles the senses, or simply
a memory of this.
If harmonium is a busy sprinkler
casting rainbows to the sun's
determined backdrop,
the greens greener than green
(down here the blue
is bluer than it should
really be); then you might consider
the river the source of prosperity
and rather than filling it in, recast its course
and send it inland, calling it snake
and naming it Protector,
making the desert sprout
and fill the nation's coffers,
fuel calls for succession.
CY O'Connor,
State Engineer, went some of the way,
linking goldfields with Mundaring Weir,
driving water into desert,
quenching the thirst of gold diggers,
washing the finds:
the pipeline a concrete and metal river,
of a precise depth and volume
and almost consistent flow.
In early paintings of the Swan
natives reclined or stood fixed
against their spears
as industry and commerce
terraformed the flows; as the protests
at the old brewery—
built over the Wagyl (river serpent,
guardian of the local dreaming)—
raged on into litigation
the art market kept its head
just above water,
though collapsing prices
in the late eighties
had sellers wary—it was still
a buyer's market.
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