Michael Buhagiar (13 January 1954 / Sydney)

A solitary cannon to the sunset points.
Idle gunners talk and smoke
And hook their heels in the sandstone’s joints
In a world the gaping centuries cloak.

Wind disturbs the waters’ shape.
Piled rocks locked suppress and curb
The sea’s tall lust to press and rape
The curfewed hulls. God is a verb.

I have journeyed here to the wilder west
In search of the darker side of my brain,
Where the sun goes down to a basement club

To emerge at dawn from a lightless quest.
And I follow now, as the shadows stain,
To return to myself through dirt plains and scrub