Starfish Poem by Dorothy Featherstone Porter

Goebbels was right.

You can be told
to hate anything.

Yesterday
the starfish
so many, so white,
so close to the dock
in the green light
off Hobart
sent me rapt
like Coleridge's old mariner
taking coils of sea snake
to his bosom.

Today
the Museum told me
the starfish
are foreigners
are breeding like rats
are gobbling them
who belong here.

They're going to round you up, starfish,
and get rid of you -

no escape
no descendants
with a scatter of your genes
to mourn
and try and breed
you back

there'll be clear water
and just the usual
rubbish.