Poem: An Unburnt Country

March 19, 2022
Issue 
Australian landscape with kangaroo

(apologies to Dorothea Mackellar)

 

I love an unburnt country

A land that’s much less hot

Where coal and oil have disappeared,

Where Clive Palmer just is NOT.

 

I love an unburnt country

And unflooded too,

Where leaders see reality.

I do, and so might you.

 

Do you love smoke-horizons,

And a polluted sea?

Scott Morrison may like them,

But please don't ask me.

 

I love a decent country

With wide horizons, it is true,

But with some humanity and love.

I do, and so might you.

 

But what we have is otherwise,

Rain and floods cause grief,

A denying government,

Extinctions, dying Reef.

 

When we think of extinctions

From official inanition,

We might hope for extinction

Of this wretched Coalition.

 

A cruel heartless government

Jailing innocents for years

Paying millions to their mates,

Stoking China fears.

 

‘We’ll protect you’, they assert.

We don't know what that means.

A Great War with China?

Invisible submarines?

 

Now an election’s coming,

Here’s a line we can rehearse:

Though Labor’s uninspiring,

It can scarcely do much worse.

 

Sing of a healthy country,

And cleaned-up land and sea,

Where koalas, gang-gangs prosper,

A wide Green Land for me.

 

Low emissions by 2030? 

To promise is not to do,

Have the electors realised?

I have, and so — I think — have you.

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