At first far-off like the keening
of a raped child out of childhood
loosing its ancestral grief over the present
--then nearer nearer surging down hastily-cleared
arteries of apprehension, till we flinch at the thought
of what freight of pure anguish is now on its way
for someone whose identity is swathed
in mortality's inadequate bandages.
What have we done? We wonder
as the ambulance passes, a sense of guilt beating feebly
against the dark one-way glass
of our condition. Where are we now?
Where are we going? What is this thing
shuttling me through the dim loom, whose thread
is a siren's note failing and falling
--that voice from the future at whose insistent summons
we are all speeding towards some amber-flashing
intersection at one in the morning
when, after the salvage-crew
with oxy-torches cut away the scrap-iron,
there's not a pulse-beat to reward their labours?

~ Bruce Dawe
"Condolences of the Season"

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