“These rocks

are so old, they have forgotten the singing

and the shouting of the sea, the violence

of the earth in the making.” 

                                         – William Wills



A tempestuous leader, querulous

                   and autocratic, Burke thought to subdue

this insurgent landscape, as he did his men,

                 to call forth great lakes or watered plains

from its arid centre.
Shouting matches and thrashings

                           as well as deaths, reduced the party.

Abandoning most of the camel train

                 and much of their twenty tons of baggage

(as useless in that sandy stone country

                          as Burke’s transported dining-table)

 they journeyed on, rewarded only

                       by waterholes and mangrove swamps.
Fearing the Aborigines, yet reliant on them for food

           Burke shot at a tribesman stealing oilcloth

and the natives fled, shifting camp.
Beset by thirst and hunger, Burke died

                    entangled beneath a clump of box-trees

fossilised forever in the rocky outcrop

                  eyes staring out past the unflinching  sky

                                              into a surreal desert.

The land claims him

         as he wrestles against it

                   hands and feet carried off by dingoes.



After David Boyd, Death of Burke (c.2003).