They came with sails of certainty,
Salt winds singing of elsewhere gods,
Boots heavy on dreaming lands.
A cross in hand—a spear of wood –
Beneath its shadow, stories dimmed
And the old songs stilled on dawn-red stones.
In fires before the English came,
The Ancestors breathed through ochre hands,
Skies mapped by stories older than their stars.
Each sacred waterhole, a pulsing heart –
Each mountain, kin to spirit-songs –
Now fenced by gospel and forbidden tongue.
“Repent,” they said, “and kneel before
A suffering man nailed high on wood –
His blood redeems, his father’s will,
His heaven promises reward.”
But what of Rainbow Serpent’s coil
And the Dreaming’s birth from breathing earth?
Children taken, names unspun,
Corroboree silenced beneath bells,
Their lore declared a pagan sin
And every totem tagged as dust.
In chapels, a silence thick with grief –
Mothers’ wails unseen in stained glass.
On every hill a crucifix,
Each shadowed arm denying sun,
Aboriginal hearts pressed to pyres
Lit by imported faith.
What could survive such holy fire?
Language stripped, ashy footprints blown.
Yet –
In eucalyptus whispers, old spirits hide,
In red soil groves and secret caves,
A thread endures, through silent lips:
Memory breathing past the hymns,
Ancient echoes in dreaming stone –
Wounded, but not dead.
Let us mourn what swords have done,
And grieve for gods left unentombed;
Let Christian roads remember this:
To walk on land is not to own,
Forgive the crimes, learn the names –
Beneath each cross, the earth remembers.
