Poem: The reply of the orange-bellied parrot
The reply of the orange-bellied parrot
"... not the orange-bellied parrot. They're just trumped up corellas." — Jeff Kennett, Premier of Victoria.
Hey, Jeff, it's that "not" that worries us —
We spread the good seed, girdling the shore,
You know in the national anthem — "girt by sea" —
Well, we put the g-string on "girt". Oh, yeah!
We don't want to be "not".
"Not" is what we don't want to be.
With us it's to be or not to be,
Us and Hamlet, Jeff, remember?
Large-billed, not small-billed
Corellas are growing in numbers.
Not us Jeff, nobody's sure
Just how many pairs of us are left,
So how can we be "trumped up corellas"?
We're not "trumped up" anything,
We've got a self, and that's what we are
Spread the good seed, been working on it
For three or four hundred thousand years.
Isn't that proof enough for you?
You know what we want to hear:
"Orange-bellied parrots, yeah! yeah! yeah!
Been here for a hundred thousand years
Made their niche on sandy shores
Spread the good seed, more and more — yeah! yeah! yeah!"
You see the green shrapnel
Shimmering over Bass Strait? That's us —
Chayaking through the winter skies,
Eyes brightening in the freezing winds,
Spreading the good seed from Tassie
To Point Lillias and the Coorong.
Truganini used to talk to us.
Maybe soon we'll talk to her again —
"Beyond the mountains",
Where she's waiting to hear
Our green wings settle with her forever.
Denis Kevans