Dark days are here.
Nothing can stop them,
they crowd like hair around the temples, everyone knows
and now we can say, at last, it is dark.
On Manus, they are walking along fine edges of themselves,
under a borrowed moon, a borrowed sun.
Nobody follows them, they would lead
only to an end of the world.
When was it darker than this?
Oh it was darker.
And the darkness is genuine,
our fingers have been dipped in it, it is felt
by all who would feel.
Where does it come from?
Us, in our masses, the massing cloud?
Our politicians, they who balance us
in their thready hands, and then plunge portions
of us and them into the pit?
Up there, a human form lies over the land.
© Petra White
Appears in the author’s book of poetry A Hunger, John Leonard Press.
A Hunger can be purchased on this link: http://www.readings.com.au/products/18778221/a-hunger-with-the-simplified-world-and-the-incoming-tide
Photo by documentary film maker Sohail Dahdal
Poem and Dish 