Patrick McCauley: Two Poems

Archipelagos

There are people with well founded dreams

from their own imaginations

who will create archipelagos of culture

that are hellholes based on lies

and corruption and unhappiness.

A thousand years of peace will not do it

if you don’t know what to do with peace.

Global citizens seem to be ashamed of Australia

they take their holidays in Europe or China or Asia

and tour the museums of terrible wars.

The Dreamtime is a moveable feast

which does not exist in time and space,

it expands the ether as we speak.

Patrick McCauley

Distance

Between the witness and the witnessed

falls the shadow of the journalist.

The paddock a thousand miles wide

separates the worker from the unionist

the maker from the middle man.

The anesthetic of the theatre intoxicates

the people in the screens of their laughter.

They suffer silently, invisibly watching news

and lie down on couches

like fattened human cows.

Though all our books are published

no-one reads the words.

Be good and take this pretty pill

it’s a thousand miles wide

an animal feeding something wild.

Patrick McCauley