wealth(Banksy to Brett Whitely)

Today,the Australian dollar is worth more than an American dollar
and one must ask what wealth is produced by 24 million folk
as opposed to 200 million?Once,wealth was the hunt-
to eat and dance and sing a tribal way(not Rousseau's "Noble Savage"-
more a primal defined lifestyle governed by laws and legends
White invasion later-smallpox ,sylphilis,assimilation
a colonial culture imposed English upon 300 languages
Same as Turtle Island,but there they broke from English
and Spanish colonies returned in ghettoes of Independence
Gondawanaland lost speech,cultures,myths,legends-
absorbed alcohol,petrol sniffing,despair,suicide
you cannot mix ambulatory with sedentary
One becomes nostalgia(unless in Arnhem Land)
the other says SORRY and white ants land.
You cannot go back.Dreams,memories,documentaries
are histories(locked in time).Once we "lived off the sheeps back"-
agricultural,sheep,cattle-wealth from and on and despite the land.
Droughts and floods persist in patterns older than us
yet now we dig (a la Burke and Wills)beneath our feet
and sell uranium to savages.Great Green Ant Dreaming becomes a film
Only Benny Zable points out the cost of wealth.We are the world's quarry
Until we run out of earth to sell,we make plastic monies
Art represents but cannot defend.We war both on foreign lands
and upon our only borrowed one.Rich refuse Carbon Tax
Global Warnings flood and cyclone.Wealth is life
Until we listen,poetry joins Dreaming-ignored until
the land reclaims its wealth,and we are history.