The Gulf’s ancient tongues are hobbled

by inherited trauma, gene-crackers 
sadistically scabrous and burgeoning

in the remembered fluency of wire-tipped 
stockwhips and all those manhandled

civilisers of a splendid frontier’s orders. 
And though munanga were not to prosper

in these mirages of pasture and surface water,
where crocs and distance preyed in circles,

a momentum remained to infest 
and disturb, to see barbed-wire fencing

and scorched stations spread like gravel
where barefooted dancers once sung

a bounty pressed intimately in ochre
and law. And so sacred trees were cut

dead, bones gathered in caves and girls
stolen as pilot were hobble chained

as sex slaves in a waste land dragged
to heel by Martini-Henry carbines

that at this critical moment were talking 

                                                             English.