REQUIEM in a SMALL TOWN[No. 5713739, 5/RAR]

City fringed patchwork of flock, forest, field and herd,

luxuriously arid land,

painted in eucalypt and gibber.

In stubbled fields begging rain –

soils compacted by tractors –

coffin ranked rows of drying hay bales laude and honour our

sons, husbands, brothers, friends.

Stubbled in ‘Nam,

lie they now on our

compacted hearts – begging remembrance.

Begging –

but our austral parks and ageing cenotaphs

subscribe to colonial virtues – Lest We Forget.

Lest We Forget –

Imperial lies and Anglophile stones

with no space allowed for our disowned dead.

Forget? –

Cuneiform holes, sandbagged, sour with their sweat.

Forget? –

Smouldering flesh begging body bags.

Lest We Forget –

those jackeroo statesmen who mustered, knackered

and consumed our generation in their pride.

Lest We Forget –

That in our protests we proclaimed them “Anathema” to us.

To us –

safe in the Dreamtime of our distant and callous rhetoric.

Coffin ranked lay they now

in our stubbled and compacted memories –

begging acceptance.

More than park or monument seek they

in this luxuriously arid land.

* * * *

© J. Gagiikwe 1968

[Lance Corporal Marenko “Tich” Thomas, No. 5713739, 5^th Battalion/Royal Australian Regiment. KIA: July 8, 1966, age 21. Born in Yugoslavia, raised in Nannup Shire. Western Australia’s first Viet Nam War National Service KIA. Buried in Nannup Cemetery, local park named after him]