My Country

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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