Googling Genocide
By Dr. Michelle Sheté
For Breteil, Preeya and Vanessa
Sweet fourteen warns
‘Don’t watch.
TV news is not for mums.’
Already versed in trench foot,
torture, rape and Milat –
‘It’s okay for me,’ she believes.
In 1985 we trekked
in iron pleats and stockings,
counting pongy cows and
apples green on a Bega farm,
vaguely pondering paddock
space and tallying hot pretty fruit shops
on the town’s main street,
comparing with Sydney’s CBD and
wondering – Why?
We marvelled in class
at the ‘pots last’ science
of dishwashing
and the important thoughts
one absorbed while
soaking in the sink’s apathetic
soapsuds and waiting –
for Godot perhaps or
for stuffed burnt apples.
We learnt nothing
of backyard slaughter,
paedophiles or Terror,
and distant Uluru in Territory Airy
was still a hushed witness,
deserting a speared folk.
But we dreamt of
oracles and utopia,
Zeus and Athena,
idyllic districts with poets
and lakes.
English was English,
so the Odes were known
from end to Spring
and Beauty was forever Truth,
but why in a White God’s name
Beauty was Truer
than the arrows and slings
of misfortunate things
nobody knew.
Today sweet fourteen,
with cheeks no longer green,
declares her set text
‘unsuitable for children,’
googles sinful priests
and Truth if she must
and surfs ISIS as instructed,
and if by miracle she is still
buoyant
she explores The Law,
anticipating Justice
for green apples
who once shrivelled
in gas ovens.
Online genocide
leaves a far stronger odour
than fresh manure,
but the New Truth is:
for History to End
its Cycle of Sorrow,
Something Must Die
Every Day.
Yet still we wonder
Why?