Adelaide River War Cemetery

Bones of Polly Mop or Mine
below
the last plaque on the grass.
Blasted into death,
there’s now no flesh
but her still fresh name
has stopped me.
Fourteen runes I read
‘POLLY MOP OR MINE’.

Her secrets buried deeper
than JF Simon’s,
Corporal, twenty,
whose familiar letters
burn bullet hot in the tropic glare
but tonight will share with Polly
all the grave black air
beneath a clouded moon —
his too soon death made me stop and wonder

if JF Simon was a white man
his rolled Up sleeves with cigarettes tucked under,
or Polly Mop or Mine was Black:
she’s nearer to some other stones
like CHARLIE LARRAKIA standing silent
in a separate line.
And yet they’re linked —

I think back then
the kids were told it’s true
— he died for Polly —
and maybe even JF Simon tried believing too
in his untaught understanding
as he marched off scared but smiling with the band.

Complexions fading into land
whose surface has been lately labelled with secret signs
JF SIMONS
CHARLIE LARRAKIA
POLLY MOP OR MINE.

 
 
The cemetery fence

a crude inscription
reads
“Kill all MABO’s”.
The red paint bleeds on silent stone.

keeping records

On the surfaces
there’s a ranking by degrees
of anonymity
frorn least to better guessed:
xenophobe;
Polly Mop or Mine,
JF Simon; etcetera.
And yet, with a bit of effort,
I bet I could learn most about
the Corporal.
I reckon the Army
has a fading dossier
with further details:
blood group,
height, weight, parents (bereft) —
never mind that just like Polly’s runes
the writing’s all that’s left.

mind map

Like heated lead
these words burn into my head
almost under thinking,
ancl silent synapses
link tracer shells
across a darkened sky —
Charlie Larrakia
JF Simons,
Polly Mop or Mine,
the blood line defying all the silent stones
and what they stand for.