the maree hotel

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The Maree Hotel

If Australia has a ship of state,
it must be the Maree Hotel.
With her green and gold VB ensign at the top mast,
and her stack all black and white for Port,
she sails silently across the empty stone ocean of old Aussie,
wearing the vast brute down speck by speck.

In her hold are hard, quiet sailors:
shoulders to the slow bar.
Four-wheel-drive tenders nudge her rubbing strakes,
discharging envoys from Oodnadatta and beyond,
messengers adrift without city.

About her, like ladies in waiting,
sit E. G. Kruse's mail Blitz,
sinking into the desert,
and the engines of a train long left without rails.

You could think the only politics are the whoosh of space
and the soft weep of power lines loosening,
bored against the blue.

Philip White













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