Australia, you build your monuments high, so the past stays out of sight,
You paint your flag on every wall, like red and blue will make things right.
You sing your songs of golden days, of mateship, pride, and land so free,
But beneath your feet, the earth still weeps for what was stolen by decree.
You bury your past beneath the roads, beneath the mines, beneath the steel,
You carve your wealth into the ground and hope that time will help it heal.
But the bones of history push back, they rise through cracks in sunburnt clay,
For justice isn’t washed downstream just ‘cause you turn your eyes away.
They named the streets for those who came with muskets, chains, and poisoned lies,
And statues stand with granite pride while truth lies shattered where it dies.
You wrote the books, you told the tale, of how this land was tamed and won,
But never spoke of blood-soaked soil beneath the blaze of settler sun.
The land remembers, though you don’t, the broken treaties left unsigned,
The whispered names, the silent screams, the families lost, the ties that bind.
The rivers know, the mountains too, they carry wounds that never fade,
And every gum tree hums the names of those who fought and those who stayed.
You teach the children lies of “peaceful settlers, empty lands,”
Convenient myths to cleanse the blood still drying on your nation’s hands.
But history is not a ghost to lock away and leave unspoken,
It is the ground on which we stand, and that foundation’s cracked and broken.
They tried to strip the tongues away, to scrub the dreaming from the lore,
To steal the songs, erase the names, pretend there was no war before.
But history is written deep in ochre, sky, and sacred stone,
And truth, though buried, never sleeps – it rises up to claim its own.
I do not write this from the scars of chains that never touched my skin,
I do not claim the stolen pain, nor stand where only they have been.
But silence is a deeper crime, a quiet knife that twists the wound,
And comfort built on buried pasts is comfort that will end too soon.
This isn’t guilt – I did not sail, nor trade in flesh, nor sign the lie,
But if I stand here blind and mute, then tell me: am I not an ally?
A debt unpaid, a story lost, a reckoning yet to begin,
To turn away is still a choice – to bury truth is still a sin.
I will not claim the stolen song, nor speak where others have their say,
But I will listen, I will learn, and I will stand and clear the way.
For knowing means there is no peace in ignorance, no pride inbeing blind,
No flag worth waving if beneath it, ghosts are clawing through the bind.
Australia, your past is buried deep, but graves can only hold so long,
And truth is like the burning grass – it sweeps the land, it moves, it’s strong.
The stories rise in tongues of flame, the voices speak in winds that howl,
And no white lie, no flag, no crown, can silence what the land will growl.
One day, when statues crack and fall and streets are given rightful names,
When elders sit in parliament, not pictures in a history frame,
When truth is carved into the laws and treaties are not just a dream,
Then maybe, through the smoke and ash, you’ll be the country that you seem.
But until then, the land still weeps, the rivers grieve, the past resounds,
And no amount of buried bones will mute the drums beneath the ground.
For history is not a ghost, nor dust that settles, fades, and flees –
Australia, you bury your past, but truth still whispers through the trees.
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You are ON FIRE !
Can we hope to see your works published to read and read again ?
Hopefully if I can find a way 🙂 I took a 3 month sabbatical over summer to write one poem a week as a challenge, so they are all being published now in one big spurt!
Amazing poetry. I also hope to see your poetry published.
I would like to see them available of posters to share the beautifully worded meaning.
Roger you are very talented.
I’m not impressed by contempt for history inspired by the prejudices of the present, not even when the contempt is expressed in verse. it is still contempt for history and it is as arrogant as it is ignorant. The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there. Ever wonder why? Ever tried to empathise with those foreigners of the past instead of xenophobically condemning them without the slightest effort to understand why they were like they were? Ever heard of the expression, more sinned against than sinning? You don’t have to sympathise and agree with them, but if you empathise you will at least recognise that they are not so very different from us.
In the future we will be the foreigners of the past who will be blamed for everything that is wrong with the future. The history of our deeds will be much more accurately recorded than any previous history. We will get a much fairer hearing from our future judges than any of our ancestors will from us. There will be little doubt about the way we failed to look after the land, and how we always ignored truth and injustice in favour of indulgence. Look at what we condone now in the present. It is far worse than anything our ancestors ever did. They at least, with their illiteracy and severely limited means of communication and lack of science, were entitled to the excuse of ignorance. We are not. They believed what they did was right, we know what we are doing is wrong.
Remembering the terrible things that people did in the past appears to have no effect on our attitude to the terrible things that we do now without any apparent moral qualm. When I was a child we would learn with horror about genocide and wonder, ‘how could people let this happen’. Now we turn on the TV and there’s the answer, not only is genocide normalised, it is publicly justified by politicians, and opposition to it is actually criminalised.
We are urged instead to condemn the past and are far more concerned about wreaking vengeance on dead ancestors than dealing with what is happening in the present. We are driven by a stupid urge to tear down anything we perceive as being historical monuments to wickedness, so that we can make room to erect our own monuments to our own wickedness that we are committing right now in our own time.
By the way, don’t kid yourself that Australia has a long history. Recorded history in Australia began just over 4oo years ago. The vile crimes committed over the thousands of years of human occupation before then are still buried deep in the ignorance known as prehistory.
What a vile, disgusting person you are, B Sullivan. Most of your comments on this site simply drip with nasty racism.
Any reference to First Nations people seems to trigger you into another putrid rant.
B Sullivan, just a heads up, in future your racist comments will not be published.
Roswell: Thank you. I think most of us here are sick of his bigotry.
Thank you, leefe.