Strung up, punch-drunk and drooping, Joe Byrne fails
before the camera. And falls again. Exposed once more
are laughter and death - the puppetty fall,
the other charcoal grins on beds of bark.
The last coals die, the hotel still defies
extinction. Barbecue breath hangs in the morning.
The blackened torsos, the stumps would point
a way: windows, the sky, impossible flight.
Still they mill, the many are dead
tired and sick, for a time, the shooters
and those dead set on shrouds and decent burial.
Someone smokes, some twos and threes chew
the fat, and filmy smoke has made the trees betray -
that they're themselves, but better - growth,
defiance, decay. Down the way the tin man
falls as well. Anger breaks, retreats,
winters in another fresh fog. Among the hills
houses stoke their chimney pyres and the photographs
remain and for want of nothing better stories
dribble out over the years, forgetful of the mad
inventiveness of death, beyond the laughter of those
chargrilled statues, unfinished works, another joke.