Rain at Gunn Point

Rain at Gunn Point

It is raining at Gunn Point: from Arnhem Land
the monsoon clouds have come wallowing to the west -
and now they hang weeping on this decaying peninsula.
It is raining steadily deep into the night,
raining on the shabby dormitories where the prisoners
lie on beds of peeling iron, sagging wires;
lie on their backs with the hands behind there heads -
men from Milingimbi, from Oenpelli, Alyangula;
from the dying moieties of the Pellew Islands;
from the empty lands around Papunya and Mount Wedge.
And Black Elvis, and Jacky Gallipoli, Beachball and Turkey,
and men of the Tiwi and the Aranda whose names
sound like water running in the Stone Country
lie awake and listen to the clouds crying.
Tomorrow they will rise with the siren and go about
the futile exercises which pass for work: but tonight
they lie awake and stare with dark glistening eyes
at the ceiling, seeing only the thunderheads
gathering over Maningrida, over Borroloola.