This poem is an *IA Writing Competition (creative work category) entry.
Sonnet on a failure
Some people won’t perceive an act of violence
In putting curfews on historic facts
Or inmates of the Great Australian Silence
Already shut up by official acts
Exiled from the purified white mind
By politicians pundits tabloid grubs
To places more befitting for their kind
The empty badlands bush and unseen scrubs
To celebrate the past is grand we’re told
A public force-fed patriotic stodge
No appetite to hear the wrongs of old
From barbeques to the palatial Lodge
But silence has a language and a name
Not listening’s a past and present shame
Brian Musgrove is a former academic and current writer. His work has been published, mainly, in the UK and the U.S. He writes sonnets on contemporary issues to entertain his wife. They live in Queensland.
* Full IA Writing Competition details HERE.
See more photography from Bill McAuley HERE.
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