Persistence of the Reformation

Seen from this high cutting
the sky drifts white linen
over dance floors of water
either side the shady creek
that trickles down country
lagoons gummed with water fern

saucepans of wet money
brass polyester gold
couch grass black with swamp
lily dams backed up gullies
and parallel in paspalum
old tillages that fed barns

no one grows patch crops now
slow-walking black cattle
circle up off cleared flats
past pastel new brick houses
and higher charcoal-barrelled
hills are fields of a war

five centuries Western jihad
though it was first called
the Thirty Years War
buff coats and ships’ cannon
the Christian civil war
of worldwide estrangement

shattered splendour Jack Tar
the nun-harem, Old Red Socks
wives “turning” for husbands
those forbidden their loves
come day go day
God send Sunday

Forget the Boyne Water
six pack, Lord Lundy
pitch Fawkes and Crummel
as boys forget Rommel—
bigot slurs jostled tempers
here, too, into the dairy age

almost the Tree Change age. And
the local dead still mostly
report to their fenced divisions
though beliefs have gone private
and wry unpreached help
has long been the message