In 1878, the base that mounts the stone fella was brought from Moruya to Sydney

It weighs eighteen tons and is stained with a plaque that reads ‘discoverer’.

Made to be so heavy that it could not be shifted

Two and a half times the weight of an elephant

Your permanence asserted through immovability,

my ancestors groaning beneath your burden.
It is widely known that igneous rocks are formed by magma cooling and congealing,

and that limestone comes into being from the calcareous left overs of organisms.

But what made you?

Massacre gleams through your stony exterior.

Patrols surround you in a ring, protecting your being

Perhaps if our bodies were made of stone

Reinforced concrete to persuade consciences

A heart beating through a dense rocky chest

Tears of granite

breath of basalt

Granular, coarse, taut.
Show them a limb made of ‘history’,

a tongue heavy with stories, heavy with silence

Replace our flesh and blood with a narrative of heroism

“Intrepid is he who plucks what he needs from the hands of others”

Reinforce our limbs with splinters of mistruth

Brush me over with one

or two

coats of pretence.

A sculpted artifice, cast over and over, caked with blood

Better you daub it now,

and as the paint dries

let it seep into the land, my land, her land

and wait for ancestral requite;

atavistic reckoning strengthened by your hatred.