Bennelong's Blues

Here's a cool one I've had tacked on the wall forever:




You're here again, old friend.


You strut around like a ragtag redcoat


bellhop, glance up for a shooting star


& its woe, & wander & out the cove


you rendezvoused with Governor Phillip


after Wil-le-me-ring speared him beside a beached


whale. We've known each other for years.


You're unchanged. But me, old scapegoat,


I never knew I was so damned happy


when we first met. Each memory


returns like heartbreak's boomerang.


You didn't tell me you were a scout,


a bone painter, a spy,


someone to stand between new faces


& gods. I didn't know your other four


ceremonial names, hero in clownish clothes,


till another dead man whispered in my ear.


--Yusef Komunyakaa