Where once a prison

In a walled garden
Cold against music
old women walk
in a walled garden
a distant piper tunes
their dance while cold
stone holds
their myth
and memory weeps
against the distant
rumble of the sea

Here, all is voice: The raven
doves
a bird whose name I do not know
whistles
A clatter of painters
clamber up the stairs
and someone is playing
a flute

Against the rhythm
of didgeridoo
the painted children dance
and one small boy cries
as he makes an emu
to grandmothers

The women sing an old poet’s rhythm
and ever - changing time
slows
into memory