I'm not recolonising, Mrs M, nor here

to put my words into your — nor

into the Island's — mouth,

nor to feel comfortable. I've seen

what's left of Port Arthur, have heard

the guide's hard hellhole narratives,

enough to make me feel

the sometime emptiness of love

and hatreds used to compensate.

Out in the blue harbour

the Isle of the Dead is always going to send

its ghostly stench inland.

I'm obliged of course to underwrite

the wonders of the place;

it's expected and it's right:

cliffs, crags, different-coloured birds,

landscape that's familiar-but-not-quite,

that makes me feel I've Star-Trek'd here,

will suddenly come to

in a staring seminar in Liverpool, babbling

of blue remembered hills and settlements

right out of Shane. In a one-horse store

a woman said ‘Everywhere you look's

a view.’ But views are history too.