Settler Cemetery

Peter Minter

The first thing we see

on entering the settler cemetery

where the dead still lie in the lie

of their country, under grass

long dead with no rain

is the cracked black earth

and the ash black shoulders of stones

toppled in random stacks,

that row and that

in the shadow of bones, white serifs

wedged out of sight.

You ask me, where is my face,

in the earth, in the night,

the fire alive in the tree?

Peter Minter (NSW) is a poet, editor and reviewer, and with Lisa Slade is co-curator of the Poets Paint Words exhibition. His Empty Texas won the 2000 Age Poetry Book of the Year, and he was poetry editor of Meanjin from 2000-2005. His latest book is blue grass.

Settler Cemetery was written by Peter Minter in response to Imants Tillers’ White Aborigines (No. 2) 1983 in the Newcastle Region Art Gallery collection.