100th Anniversary Celebrations of the Australian Flag, etc.

100th Anniversary Celebrations of the Australian flag at the Fremantle Artillery Barracks Museum,  2 September, 2001



A sudden surprising sea of flags and faces.
Who called out and dressed these ranks
of every age and income, as far as I can tell,
gathered before relic guns and tanks?

They fill the old parade ground, waving the flag,
singing and cheering, this Sunday afternoon.
Something I hope good seems to have retrieved
patriotism from the dark side of the moon.   

The flags look suddenly brilliant, swirling here
above the harbour and the portent of ships' hulls.
Introduced fireworks, rainbow lorikeets blaze
and whirl in palms above stark crows and gulls.

A crash from the muskets of whisker-waffling
red-coated or kilted colonial volunteers
bedizened with medals, including Vietnam,
and again from all three rousing cheers.

I dislike those who dislike it, so I'm here,
but it's hard to know this Century's new dreams.
I know all the history and economics that I want.
I hope, I hope, that this is what it seems.

I don't question it, and we enjoy the show,
take in the galleries: Kokoda, Flanders mud.
Questioning belief and enthusiasm now
is a bit like playing a fire-hose on a flood.

At times, flags and marchers could be fearful,
I don't need telling. But be that as it may
it's hard to see more than innocence and joy
among the company gathered here today.

And anyway, I like the teenage marchers,
the red-coat re-enactors and the crowd,
who have come to this instead of something else,
happy to sing, wave flags and cheer aloud.

Cadets and pipers and their earnest officers,
grandfatherly RSL men, young parents beaming down
at flag-bedecked infants, a happy panorama
of decent people in a memory-peopled town.

A mild and gently sunny day of colours,
above this quaint little city, with these old relics round.
Strange, block-shaped ships, like symbols of the future
head for the harbour, strange cargoes inward-bound.

Twelve years ago the Cold War ended,
We have peace now. We’ve all been slow
to take that in. Yet now it’s happened,
here in this world with its nine days to go.