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Bomana
Marcel Fernandes
The presumptions of lament swell to sump
as the minibus offloads the pilgrims,
prepared (dark sunglassed, kleenexed and perfumed)
to genuflect before the hewed quartz pews
that mark the rank and corps of corpses rank,
presided over by a sword in stone
and cockatoos squawking the Bach D minor fugue.
Patriotic tears are method-acted
for the cigarillo-smoking auteurs
that are our minds, taking nostalgic snaps
of how horrible we think it must've been
that young men died in such a way,
unknown soldiers with crosses on their graves,
nervy, reedy ephebes in suspenders
learning to hold cigarettes, guns
and dying brothers in their arms,
learning to tell their stories of floating
down the Yarra river and capsizing,
of dropping cherrybombs down wells, scampering
off like rabbits so the locals thought a war was on,
before the world shrinks to a punctured gut
and morphia congeals like a condom
over memory; stuttering on broken words,
they couldn't know that they were making us.
ISSN: 1449 - 0471
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