9. Five Revisions On The Name Of "Captain Cook" (a. K.S.)

				I

Captain Cook was an admirable man,
as old books on history 
would have us believe,
but now the fate of all souls
is rewritten in economics
and the causal consequences
of their remembered name.
He was a harbinger of Western destiny,
virtual transplanter of modern culture,
his ghostly fingers still pointing this way,
despite his richly detailed reports 
of this apparently poverty 
stricken foreign landscape
these hands still brought the bringing 
of modern ways and diseases 
from a so called `Old World' 
drawn out and painted, notated
on walls of rock of an age,
in comparison, much younger...

Master navigator in sailing
was this Captain Cook,
who like some mystic druid
could read the chameleon sea,
interpret this well-written text,
revealed from cover to cover,
whose experiences of these shores
wrote a chapter that sent 
one Captain Phillips
to invest in this land 
with a dumped and discarded deposit
of a motley crew of convicts,
the true seed of this new nation to be, 
grafted incontinently on this 
not yet contented continent...

				II

...And parts of the land now became
an English garden, flowering 
convict men and women,
souls transported in prisons 
made more mobile and outward going,
souls not wanted but now desired,
filled with conviction,
desiring their post-penal salvation.
They worked hard, these white slaves,
on this sandy soil, in times 
of drought and bounty, produce 
that later harvested a reprieve 
in the form of land and stock
written out on a piece of paper,
plotted out in some strange,
arcane, wise person's notation;
so bizarre and too crazy
to read, if that they could,
under the heat of one hot sun,
without blinking...

There to greet them, eventually,
in this fiction of an empty land,
overcoming a near-fatal trepidation,
charitable natives took pity on this ark 
of non-endangered, uncouth specimens.
All around aboriginals conversed,
swapping names, learnt to speak 
in fluent Pidgin English to each other;
to say "hello," "mate," and "dear,"
and find other words, more useful words, 
like "how much," "thank you," "kind sir," 
and not to speak when their women folk 
did a walkabout down town 
and only returned before 
the same waking sun saw
a misplaced white-faced shame 
in not learning the arts and graces 
of how races might intermix more properly,
with some style, and with some sanity...

The hallowed bush was burnt and slashed 
and not allowed to return,
a portent of the killing fields
yet to come, with veiled names 
like "Deadmans Gully," "Blackmans Pass,"
and settlements called "Blacktown."
In silvery ships upon the sea 
they came to stand and stare,
to look for water, to dig,
to poke thunderous sticks at kangaroos
and drably feathered emus,
flighty birds too careless for words,
who would quite thoughtlessly 
wander far too close.
Its ironic, and sadly symbolic,
that these Emu Plains,
once thick with stock,
have now only remnant flocks
locked up behind the barb-wired fences
enclosing neglected military preserves,
presenting a moving target
only during those occasional culls.
Well-planned this settlement seemed,
supplied well, soon to be re-supplied, 
but desperate to re-learn the ways 
of this ancient, flattened land, 
torched by fire and sun,
that these civilized folk befriended
these awkward visitors who quite forgot
to move on and leave and come back
an appropriate number of years 
some time down the track
as a bush etiquette would normally have it.
Today, we find ourselves 
in the same boat, in similar straits.
Across the waters of this Botany Bay 
shiny, silvery jets scream in to land, 
and then, with an even greater shrillness, 
take their leave defying all gravity.
But, perhaps times are changing
and these folk will be well treated
and we, in turn, might be left alone,
without spilling our blood
upon this same, renamed landscape...

				III

Two runways crossed this vacated mouth
east-and-west and north-and-south,
and around the edge the mill pond lay
pushing past the shifted sands of this swollen bay...

To this pair they've added a third path
running northward with a thund'erous laugh,
filling in those environmental plans
to be filled in when the port expands...

Now politicians showed their concerning care
by discerning how many souls would hear,
would have to bear this aerial rumbling
equal to the good folk on the ground grumbling...

And the answer they estimated 
when all houses were calculated
was just eighty thousand northward
and a hundred and ten eastward...

So these three runways then again became two,
running north-and-south with a city view,
so tourists can quickly go sight-seeing
and businessmen can do their down-town shopping...

				IV

Now why must sporting men and boys 
mess around in small boats and craft
yet when ashore look for bigger toys
like fast cars with a deeper draught..?

Simulating salty seamen,
from a swaggering yesteryear,
they ride the harbour driven
like sheeted ghost in plastic gear...

Smell the breeze upon the bay
sometimes tinged with kerosene
that good Cook, if here, would up weigh
with anchor and soon leave this sad scene...

Botany Bay, if truth be said,
is not that very botanical,
more like a shallow sewer with lead
and chemicals more petrochemical...

But some mangroves still remain
and one long beach trapped in a park
that if Captain Cook came again
he'd find no wildlife except after dark...

				V

That profligate, proliferated 
name "Captain Cook" has signed
the geographical landscape that frames
this part of the world Down-Under,
and `lest we forget' a common coin 
of the realm that has also launched 
the face of a thousand pubs; 
and how many struggling students 
have walked under that swinging lintel,
have come to drink the good health
of their teachers, and their friends,
their loved ones and their kith and kin,
and wished the world all the success 
it needs to stay as one, to survive 
all those wars, all those trials
and tribulations, those nuclear tests, 
meet that day it must move on to pass 
that ultimate, final exam..?

That the winds took thee that be true,
but within such confines he steered
a much further, wider course, 
his was an expert hand,
a leader of locked up men 
that must live and sleep together,
a band of salt-washed actors 
that must dance together,
stand together, and die together
if that too could not be avoided.
Long, stormy, impassioned days 
of toil lashed by winds of command
punctuated with becalmed days 
of a motionless sea-sickness
dividing an equatorial passage
completely outpaced by the calls
of circling gulls gliding,
gliding slowly past...

...Then at last, 
that precious sight of land, 
at first seen like some dream,
a mirage reflected in cloud,
whose faint praises are softly recited,
whispered from beyond a thumping surf, 
a heartfelt contact contracted 
with these folded hollows,
an exotic line of sand
between cliffs in a bay
whose welcoming arms echo
that love for a country left behind,
for a long travelled seamen
a much treasured pleasure,
moments never ever forgotten.
Here, the damp promise of dry earth,
steady beneath the pace
of salt-encrusted feet,
the taste of fresh water, 
the smell of better food 
just dispatched by hand,
the sight of feminine company,
the site of masculine company,
the direct challenge of different
ways and means in perceiving 
this world, this wonderfully 
wretched world in the grips 
of a gregarious desire 
that inspires persons
to watch each other 
`carefully watching each other,' 
`cautiously out watching,
watching each other...'

Old sailors love to spin a yarn,
partake that bacci soaked in rum,
have you pull up one more chair, 
listen to the music of a counter-tenor voice 
recount the dramatic actions relived,
played out upon the tossing 
of far flung seas,
embroider a tale oft retold and sung
with a few too many ornaments,
here and there re-added, or dropped,
carefully tailored and fine tuned
to re-focus the attention 
of their concurring, purring audience;
"have they heard all this before?"
he secretly asks himself;
always re-worked with 
a hidden moral re-interpreted, 
in the repetition never quite the same, 
somewhat renewed each time?
In this there be no difference 
for them more fancy historians,
censoring each new re-creation,
them be but professional tellers of tales,
who from the same moth-eaten facts
can re-weave a different texture
each new generation, year by year,
even in the mere re-reading 
of their own texts..!

Cook did not live to settle down,
clubbed to death by angry natives
this time too quick to be 
all shot one by one, his blood 
washing the white coral sands 
on that tide swept beach swept clean,
in that passing passage of fickle time
that laughs at man's folly,
in that wish to outlive fate, 
to outlive that beach out there,
that division in time
left to beach us all.
But don't despair, not all is lost, 
must dissolve and disappear,
at least in that heaven of concreted fact,
there, only the soul-name of each, 
individual person so tagged can never die, 
never be completely forgotten,
fading footsteps never quite forgiven,
left as traces re-told in tales,
animated images left stranded 
on and along that distant, eternal shoreline, 
like crowded crowd scenes pointed out
within a moving picture 
within a moving picture,
somewhere in the background,
somewhere out there -
in the mists of time,
in the stories of others
not always too kind
to them when re-called,
who, in reply, can 
never quite answer...