ISCARIOT

Recalled at last to my profession,
My true calling,
Scornfully sacrificed to avarice,
I found myself
Transported to the place of peace,
That jewel in a coastline
Supposedly free of cold and horrors,
A port of call, a lionised entrepot
For slave traders and explorers
And the rest of empire's captives, now released.

It was all but unrecognisable, a shining urban shock,
Transformed by new winds of conquest,
Tornadoes and hurricanes that no one can block,
The storms of hordes that respect no borders.
Like the old world, it was a maze of congestions,
Answers incapable of asking the right questions,
Amidst thoughtless betrayals by expertly misinformed teachers.
Streets blistered where flowers had rambled,
Shadows of architecture's follies lapped at the beaches,
And diesel fumes fouled paths where pedestrians once ambled.

The colonial house of my irreverent and forgetful bloom
Had long ago been acquired by a criminal of commerce;
But it was a short walk from work to my sorry studio room,
Furnished with rejects from Bunnings, KMart and worse.
When I arrived, home was perched above a sports ground,
Its grandstands sculptured by their floodlit surround.
There, athletic lads waited, wearing the lolly greens of the capital's teams,
Impatient for the coming contest, too young to sense the treachery of dreams.