Pieta

In response to ‘Maralinga’, sculpture, Lin Onus, 1990, The Art Gallery of Western Australia

In this quiet room,
where the dreamtime hangs
in dots of red and black,
in dots of black and white
and fields of ochre,
the light grey walls absorb
the distant thunder
of toxic dreams
we hung upon the wind.

She stands to face the wind,
her clothes cling to her;
her hair, her breath, her life
all blown away; she holds
her daughter close; clings to
a vanished future.

She leaves no space for Michelangelo
or carved Carrara marble; here ‘pity’
grows in fibreglass,
and flows
through plexiglass that knows
the shapes we give to progress.


Dennis Greene (Western Australia)

From Here Be Dragons (Puncher & Wattmann 2015)