Turkey

 They help us in the calling

Of a Colombus flower

The dirt off the shoe

Of a kangaroo

And the bell rings in the old 

Church tower

Each of these are mercies see 

When it comes to addressing the bones

The dead rise up in the swamp

In the swamp

And there they try to atone

For to kill the thing you love is worse

A worse sin

Than Heaven above knows

To tap the shoulder of the devil of love

To confuse him with being alone

To change your clothes in a waterfall

To fly and see the whole of the rainbow

Only complete when you've left the earth

A thousand feet below

Is this what the angels see papa?

When they look down from their clouds

Do they see rainbows and rings of colours?

Do they have rain in their eyes?

Does it rain where they are?

Is the mist of the stars

Too much too much to know

Is it a bird or a country, Turkey

Is Van Diemen's land a constellation of stars

Look let me show you how to sit on the bed

How to Span it with an arched back

How to raise your spine and look at the stars

Wheel above

As the bed turns like a carousel

And eternity spins high above us

Let us look at the crown of stars

Look are they another country?

Let us look at the man in the attic

Who was just looking for birds

As a buzzard swoops down onto the carcass

You say look it was a turkey not a country

In the end

But how can you tell in this land

Of cow pats

And early rats 

Who hunt near dawn

How can you tell who is telling the truth?

And why did you speak to the stranger like that?

My mother says to me

Because he was hiding in the attic

Because he likes to hide in the reeds

And he stalks birds and creeps up on them

And captures their souls secretly in his photographs

When they don't know it

He steals their beauty, that was only meant for nature 

And the morning to see

And it is only the vague dread they feel

Of being watched, by these silent men

Who wait like snakes in the grass

He wore a hat that was too small for his head

Like a cap on a battery

A bald battery with a broad jaw

Like Buffalo Bill

She said

And I told him that

And next time I looked he had fled

Or else there were vague shufflings

But I could not see him

Hidden in the reeds

Of the attic

A secret

And so I went out into the wide world

To look for him,

Like my mother and father once said

Look for yourself

Find yourself

But I kept needing the toilet

And so I ran back up to the attic

Where my secret fears were kept

In the house of tears

And I met the man who was running there

Too

He said I was born to sit for hours on the toilet

Waiting, I bring a book

So you go first

And then I tried the different wooden doors like beach huts

But some were occupied

Until one was vacant

But a lady came there first

So I gave it to her

And nothing was free 

then

Except the country and the turkey