You once smiled a friendly smile,
Said we were kin to one another,
Thus
with guile for a short while
Became to me a brother.
Then you swamped my
way of gladness,
Took my children from my side,
Snapped shut the law
book, oh my sadness
At Yirrakalas’ plea denied.
So, I remember Lake
George hills,
The thin stick bones of people.
Sudden death, and greed
that kills,
That gave you church and steeple.
I cry again for Warrarra
men,
Gone from kith and kind,
And I wondered when I would find a pen

To probe your freckled mind.
I mourned again for the Murray tribe,

Gone too without a trace.
I thought of the soldier’s diatribe,
The
smile on the governor’s face.
You murdered me with rope, with gun
The
massacre of my enclave,
You buried me deep on McLarty’s run
Flung into a
common grave.