Sorry-Business Camp

SORRY-BUSINESS CAMP


Makeshift humpies
Unfixed slap-up shelters
But one with a colour television
Openly visible on the inside.

Blankets bleeding into dust
Jeans and jumpers buffetting the dirt.
A mangy dog sits on its shadow, a dog
Looking across to the hidden dogs

Thin standing posts wobble as if for
A goalless sorry football game, offering nothing
In support as bull-nosed WW2 Nissen-hut roof-sheets are
Sheeted away, lent up on a point of something.

For somebody who 'passed away', the cliche is apt
As the goal is for somebody died as cannot be told, a Kumanji,
Whose former name cannot be spoken as a sorry-business camp
Speaks the grief which comes in mourning to make a home.

In the skillion caves of iron and canvas
doors with hessian windows, and a mulga
Wood fire at the front door as if to live
Eternally before a hearth of ashes.