Looking for Home (from The Dialectics of Rain)

We’d heard of that country, heard of its hugeness

heard of the miles of empty

A sky full of light so bright it hurts

the earth red and flat and forever

The black dome of night seething with stars 

its arcing black arms saying Welcome!

This whole vast space, and so few people

Plenty of room for lost souls…

They say they’re good people, everyone’s equal

Definitely no airs and graces

 

They laugh at their leaders, no military coups there!

They believe in fair go mate 

looking out for the under-dog—that’s us!

They say She’ll be right, so we will!

Worth all those bullying blue months in the sea’s wild claws. 

Worth leaving our loved ones, and home…

But they think we’re the people we run from

We’d disturb their comfortable lives

They famously fear the dark

Papa he’s old, could not be persuaded  

I want the devil I know, and that space is all desert,

their hearts, their heads just as empty. And those thousands of stars

 are the wrong ones, mocking the distance, the difference

They kick the under-dogs, chase them off

send them starving to Somewhere Else

I’d rather face bombs and prison here, than their detention 

in the desert or on impoverished islands

They don’t want us there. There are car stickers which tell us

‘Fuck off we’re Full’

They think we’re the people we run from

We’d disturb their comfortable lives

They famously fear the dark

Papa he’s scared, he’s scared of change

but any change must be better, than screaming 

of bombs, of children and men, skeletal buildings 

and the constant fear of the midnight knock…

He sees only the worst, his fears defy reason—A huge rich land. 

The Fair go land. Would they turn us away, fleeing death?

But they think we’re the people we run from

We’d disturb their comfortable lives

They famously fear the dark…