Читать книгу Catastrophic - Humphrey Hartney - Страница 11

We wait for the evening news

to hear of those:

– hiding from the flames in water tanks

and boiled alive

– in basements or self-dug bunkers

and smoked to death

– finding relief, at last, in a dam

asphyxiating there

(or drowning or)

– just plain exhausted, half-dead from the great fight,

giving up, lying low, overwhelmed

the family home now

less home,

more crematorium.

On our screens, horses go crazy, snorting, eyes wide,

manes smouldering

running up and down country lanes,

leaping, confused,

away from fire yet

towards the flames.

Fields of cattle abandoned by their owners knowing

The insurance claims will see them replaced –

And now neighbours with leashes, cages, bridles, leads

Doing what they can to keep any creature safe

Trying to trap animals lost and wild in fear,

Their arms bleeding from teeth and claw,

Their souls damaged from the

sheer

disbelief of it all.

The Prime Minister comes on like a daffy clown to tell us

how excited he is about the cricket.

So, we have to look somewhere else

for guidance, sympathy

understanding

leadership.

She spoke –

A grandmother mute, white pants and a bra

Dashing between trees

using a towel or her top to snatch

Koalas from the flames.

Wordless, she spoke deeply to us

of a special kind of hope.

It lasted some days in our heart until we heard

The victims she’d saved

In confusion, distress, and agony

had died anyway.

The Deputy Prime Minister comes on

insisting to all microphones that this is normal.

That anyone who says it’s not is some kind of

Inner-city, latte-sipping, Green-voting dolt.

The Premier jumps in –

now’s not the time to speak of climate change.

she whines.

With all this brain-dead talk

It’s hard to have words that mean.

But there’s two people at least

Who know how to speak:

Aaron Grove simply said

“In this bucket is all that is left of my home.”

And he tipped out a pile of ash

Sadly

There in Macquarie Street

In front of the parliament.

Stanza two was a woman,

Melinda Plesman,

She put out a piece of charred house frame

A few burnt sticks

A length of tan/black burnt iron

And piles of ash

and said the same.

“This was my home.”

She borrowed one of those little concrete paths

That connect all the monumental detritus

of our wonky bush capital

And from there

carried on her life

as best she could.

We will never have the time

to speak of climate change.

Walking, later, among charred trees

I saw, on a still-standing burnt-out trunk

A strangely lighter shade of black…

As if something had clung there

And burnt there.

I felt sick to my guts.

The patch was in the shape of a koala.

I wondered if that towel-bearing grandma

Had been at work around here.

I sat on the ground, exhausted by all that was happening.

Feeling that

somehow

These were the only people in the whole damned world

who knew how to care.