Too Little, Too Late

A white lily sunrise brings the malaise, humid dreams shimmer off the blackening tar Red dust girates an axis dark matter is overcome, lethargy drags the body into a blazing bright sun Work, a joke on labouring men each day drains into the next, without a dropping of heaven without a wisp of air, no respite The incessant heat hoards air, the smell of rain on a breeze, nothing but a cruel memory as the earth bakes golden These summer days long for the circles to turn, for cooler winds braced with a stinging cold nose   For nights clothed in linen their warmth, a comfort, not these deadly months this end of the world Gaping fissures score the face of the outback, spinifex gathers along a rabbit proof fence Farmers no longer see a blue horizon beckoning, the life they bestowed, now, lost in bankrupt despair  The year's turning decades and the green paddocks, never more will checker our rolling countrysides each day another species dies each day another million lives become nothing but a eulogy on a yellowed classified page Still we do nothing, much, still the child cries unheard, and the world will end, not, with a bang or a shout But on a whistling breeze only heard by the gods