Comissioned by Robert McIntyre’s 2022/23 University of Melbourne Wattle Fellowship
‘Our Duty to Care’ for soprano and piano trio
No more prophecy
until the sky begets a softer
Everlasting sun
or
the youth unravel
braided darkness
rushing innocence
all over Earth
Shadows designed
for our tired birth places
ghosting the new life
upon babbling breaths
And so the young are born
New Guardians
Robed in
Apocalypse
—-----
Know they will rise
as disappearance is written
on ancient weather
become beast
She watches above
as birds fall
out of the mother sky
March into the high courts
of creators and destroyers
Anjali Sharma and the army of
Future keepers
Enter this laced arena
burning horizons in their bellies
The Minister surveys the gravity
how deep we may breathe
how quickly we will fall
when the Earth veins split
and the sanctuary howls
at its open flesh
The weather sounds like a whisper
in these walls that stand for justice
Lay down a pocketful
of bird bones
of poison oceans
—-
They speak for the
forgotten
Their ancestral home-body
Their drowning, burning worlds
for their lands that have lost hope
together their voices are louder
Becoming suns
Becoming rains
Becoming rivers multiplied
Becoming the skyward call
of protection
this call
is honoured
the duty of care rewritten
A first for acknowledging
the changing wilds
Evidence now held
in palms that believe in
collapse
and might begin to
listen
Blessing the horror
with a soft breath of courage
Remember how
young sacred tears
are greeting Earth
like miracle seeds