highlyeccentric | Fallin' - Bobby Sykes (Reply)

The Sister has been raped, they said.

I squeezed my eyes tight-shut - in horror,
though I knew, knew, knew, that the horror had just begun;
In shock; but not in disbelief, I heard,
by five Brothers.

And I thought
Brother, flesh of my flesh,
you have watched / while we / your sisters
cried, gave birth, died, went insane, tore out our own hair,
spat on our own bodies, screamed the soundless scream,
sweated blood -
in agonies which white men caused, damn them and their lives

Yet you have still learned from them
and turn your new craft to us. Rape Bash Kill.

We, your Sisters, newly learnt
that protection is possible,
that with you by our side we are safe,
that together, we are all safe,
must learn again...

Must learn to defend ourselves
from those who stand so close,
eat of our table, of food which we prepared,
must learn again to recognize the mad-dog disease
which is again the white man's legacy.

This poem makes me uncomfortable. It seems to make certain truth claims about rape and sexual violence which I find difficult to credit - rape was not invented by white folks. BUT. Everything I do know about violence and social disorder in Indigenous communities in Australia shows a pretty clear connection between the disempowerment of the colonised and subsequent internal violence. *shrug* I'm pretty certain the poem was SUPPOSED to make me uncomfortable, after all.

And this concludes your program of selections from the Oxford Book of Australian Women's Verse ed. by Susan Lever. Onwards to... er, something else.