After Maralinga

The affairs of a handful of natives

Are as nothing when compared with the crowns

It's for the good of all, all the dust that falls

From deep black clouds over out-back towns

You could learn it from the chants of the song-men

'Til the song-men disappeared

Night glowed down under, in a place called 'Thunder'

From a settling dust that even settlers feared

After Maralinga, the half-life lingers

After Maralinga, the moving finger writes to say

After Maralinga:

That a government stalls

While whole lives just waste away

There are at least one hundred and thirty

Though their numbers are set to expand

Who lost their health and the health of their children

Wearing British khaki on stolen land

But meanwhile the physicists insist on accuracy

And meanwhile they total all the bills in the treasury

But between there and the suffering

Something gets lost

Cause they won't add up and they don't pay up the clean-

Up cost

After Maralinga, the half-life lingers

After Maralinga, the song-men come again someday

In their deep-red ochre and their whitest clay