After Maralinga (Latin Quarter)

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