The White Man

Red the dirt under her feet
Yellow the sun above his head
Black the skin our one true family

How like a plague of demons
They must have seemed - pale dead skin
Darkening under southern sky
How like the sound of the fall
Must have seemed the canon shot
The musket crack
The return of the lightning men
Riding thunderclouds over the waves
Flashing lightning strikes the law
The gallows

All at once - genocide - extinction
Rolling out concussive waves
Silent unknown diseases racing
Plagues of rats cats dogs mice
Plagues of weeds in passing
Fences of ownership strangling

These strange pale ghost shapes
Pass out drink - their speech
In all directions and how many
Passed not once sighting
How much laid to waste

Those who lead yet fail to govern
Say we have no need to apologise
- We never did anything - it was not us...
But they seem to forget how we benefit
And prosper from all that death
And primitive accumulation.