Waiting for the dog catcher.

I

A slick slurry, thick
with worried commuters

an oozing, slow moving spine
of the city

is rumbling to a start, at the
appointed time

somewhere among the seething throng,
heaving along the arterial roads, We

pass painted bollards, there to
remind the procession

Of some imagined sublime serenity
that lived for a while in a painted century

done in colonial colour to remind those who
dared to stand:

which corners were conquered first-
where those street names would hang

suspended by the burgeoning class
with surnames that conveyed branded goods

held in bond for the uncommon man, knights
and dames that came and took their weight in

the coin of this country, at its indefensible
exasperated phrase

and left it breathless, among those words
we use as a foil to the violence

II

That's now hidden but never really gone,
as a dark skein runs under the veneer of respectability

and all those who trundle along the highway
to huddle-holes, in hilled housing

estates sprawling, and crowding out their green
rationale

feel the strain of a history's million ghosts
and a collective haunting that draws us here-

and keeps us in our habit, foundlings waiting
in a two century dream

III

What was born forty millennia back in dream
and rushing though us now, as a silent scream

it is the sound of lyrebirds singing for rain
and all that sound can't keep us sane

so we wait for the dog catcher to take us below,
we welcome him with baying, to our country.
We all know.