Chorus & Protagonists - J.S. Harry

Over
Centennial Park -
where Patrick White
used to walk - above
where he wanted
his ashes blent-
in the middle distance, black birds
flap & wrap themselves, as if
round invisible lumps of air. They look like
bits of coal-sheeny washing:
wind-caught undergarments from Greek tragedy.
Cah, they cry, they are both
chorus & protagonists, as they swoop & flap
their underclothes of death
low over the
small birds darting into tea-tree thickets.

At dusk a different
conspicuous villain
sits in the huge fig, he is black
with a white-tipped tail, gold
rings round his eyes like a gypsy.
Casually swinging from the tip of his beak
like a silverblue sardine
he has stabbed from the blue
tin of the air, he holds, before taking up
to dismember, on the upper branch,
before the student-audience, his three
gawky ignorant fledglings,
one perfect
Dusky Wood Swallow.
The class is Dismemberment 1 (Life-Drama)
for about-to graduate Currawongs.