The Old Prison
The rows of cells are unroofed,
a flute for the wind’s mouth,
who comes with a breath of ice
from the blue caves of the south.
O dark and fierce day:
the wind like an angry bee
hunts for the black honey
in the pits of the hollow sea.
Waves of shadow wash
the empty shell bone-bare,
and like a bone it sings
a bitter song of air.
Who built and laboured here?
The wind and the sea say
—Their cold nest is broken
and they are blown away–
They did not breed nor love,
each in his cell alone
cried as the wind now cries
through this flute of stone.
About the convict-built jail at Trial Bay, near Kempsey. It was “used for the internment of German aliens during world war one”.
