The Sounds of Predawn Light

He was a wild god searching for what all old wild gods are searching for and he flew through the dying city like a prehistoric bird

 Well, he’s moving through the flames of anarchy

He’s moving through the winds of tyranny

And the sweet, sweet tears of liberty

Yeah, moving round the world

He’s moving through your body like a prehistoric bird

He’s moving round the world

Nick Cave

"Under the greenwood tree Who loves to lie with me, And turn his merry note Unto the sweet bird's throat, Come hither, come hither, come hither: Here shall he see No enemy But winter and rough weather."

Shakespeare

Moving around the world. Cast to the Earth. Disconnected and brazen. Moving around the world. From the new Roman Empire to these humble reaches. He visited people at this time of year, holiday season, a lightening of mood all around, he could feel that, Merry XMAS all, but they had been betrayed, there wasn't any doubt about that, and he was disturbed by the Watchers on the Watch, real or imagined, and disturbed by the occasional threat that leached through the ether, again real or imagined, and the next assignment? 

He would travel the world and travel the continent, which so few people knew, and come up for air and gasp: how beautiful, while the night birds made small sounds on the lake and Empire, the centre of things, was elsewhere. 

Australia, that strange notion on conquered lands, was being eaten out at the core, as his old mother used to say, and the glint of armour on the edge of battlefields, gird yourself for battle, and here the busy ants as they threaded their way through the highways of the future, as they seemed already, busy, cars banked as far as the eye could see, and the appalling mess that was the country, divided, destitute, one business after another going to the wall as the country exported coal and gas and the hypocrisy of their climate change rhetoric knew no upper limit.

The government had embarked on a re-rigging of the energy network without bipartisan support, and without any common sense, another outrage perpetrated on the population by walls, armies of bureaucrats doing the bidding of their secret masters; as if the Democrat Party in America had folded up shop and moved to Australia, so ridiculous, so absurd was the prognostications of the ludicrous, those who ruled.

It was a wonder we weren't all broke already.

Moving round the world like a great, big, prehistoric bird, a great, big, beautiful bird. 

Here, we were just betrayed. Thrown into serfdom. There was no national pride. There was no social cohesion. And on his morning walks around the park, barely, if any, native English speakers, so rapid had been the demographic transformation, so obscenely high had been the rates of immigration, despite all the warnings from overseas. A million extra people crusted these ancient, sacred lands. And nobody had been asked. All was imposed. They lied and lied and lied, to all of us, and he could break down the door, and hear their secrets, but the biggest secret of all, which, really, was no secret at all, was the utter dysfunction of it all, beneath that thin media projected veneer. Total dysfunction.

They knew not what they did. 

They really, truly, had no idea. And that was the most frightening thing of all, if not for himself for the country. 

They were wheeling into a New Year, the horses reared, the greats of the age stirred, a time of genius and brilliance above a sleeping mass, old wisdom born anew, English! An amalgam language. He was about to soar. The geniuses of the age were about to soar. All extraordinary, that glinting multi-coloured chrysalis armour in a divinity saturated light. 

There was more to come. You cannot die out now, the anaesthetised connections, the blood running cold, those who fell to Earth like flies frazzled in an electric insect killer. For they were all caught in a greater destiny well beyond their own.

And all the time, the sounds of predawn light. 

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