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Battos refers to the Greek myth as told in Ovid’s Metamorphosis and in Hesiod’s The Great Eoiae. Battos, a servant of Neleus, promises Hermes not to tell about the cattle stolen by the god. He breaks his promise and is turned into a stone, the silex index or touchstone.

In the Homeric Hymn to Hermes (at one time attributed to Hesiod) the thieving new-born Hermes implores Battos:

not to have seen what you saw

not to have heard what you heard

I

The thing I don’t understand…is

why we are actually here

said one Myer employee to

an’other on Bourke Street Mall

falling from the sublime to

commonplace absurdity.

And you who have arrived here de-

void of aitches, with the

stammering pronunciation of

foreigners that chatter

with harsh dental sounds your mind

queries this actually.

Since time immemorial poets have

punned on your name Batttos

Batodropos — thorn plucker…

Battologeo… Battarismos…

a stuttering prattler turned to

Lydian touchstone basanite.

A witness to cattle theft when

the newly-born Hermes

drove Apollo’s loud-lowing kine

past watch-posts upon rock

bewildered you watched the thieving

babe drive cattle backwards way.

And on his feet Hermes wore the

dreaded kadaitja [i]

shoes of rolled emu feathers held

by marsupial fur string

that none might know his footprint or

from where he came or went.

Hesiod’s myth thick tongue thrice tells of

you betraying one god

to another god and to the

selfsame god — two tales fused [ii]

held by the echo of your name

and your stuttering tongue.

II

Between emigrate and

immigrate you are a migrant

one whose tongue is not understood

and yet it betrays you

halting and faltering rhythm

and timing of your speech.

No matter if you’re legal or

ill-of-legal customs

will turn what’s most intimate and

familiar to foreign

and slowly what gave you life is

vowed to your cenotaph.

Your hope-driven leap into de-

solation uncertain

the moment of your forsaking

quarrelsome sever’d life

begins its out of dreamtime journey

in this outlying land.

And the greater the distance the

greater the betrayal

thy mind brakes in broken English [iii]

and your mother tongue flakes

isolated in the hidden

streaks of your memory.

With foreign and fractured talk they

banter the newcomer

it was awful the way ockers

from the very first wave,

treated reffos, the red-hot beer

drinking time of violence.

Your history — undying cangue,

is but chaff to their eyes

and why don’t go back then… and

why don’t you go back

tears [iv] none can understand. What’s rent

inflames the phantom pain.

III

They were climbing up the mast last

 time, and holding up their

babies [v] to us said the Coastwatch

pilot unaware that

Hermes stood by his side smiling,

musing on destiny.

And how many times must your mind

whirl the memory of

when you first encountered mortal

man born before your time

the one you turned to stone, and now

these children held up high.

Herald of the gods, ‘t was Zeus

that gave you the duty

to uphold travellers’ free right

of passage on all roads

that each and every one might reach

their journeys’ end safely.

But as swift wind you are the god

of thieves, merchants, cunning,

perjury and fraud. And it is

as god of eloquence

that you gave Pandora crooked

speech and named her so.

On behest of angry Zeus

to the ceaseless wheel you tied

Ixion, bound Prometheus

to Mount Caucasus, and it is

you who lead mortals to

endless Hades forever.

What right of passage is this that

sends them from anguish to

torment. They who have come from a

place of scorched bones and stones

for their gibber[vi] tongue are cast to

gibber on Woomera.

IV

The frailty of human life

is adrift in a skiff

on shark infested waters where

only prime ministers

dare to swim and requiem their

diktat to understanding.

We cannot surrender our right

as a sovereign country

to control our borders, and we

cannot have a situation

where people can come to this

country when they like. [vii]

Ipu-wer, minister also

four thousand years ago,

lamented [viii] that foreigners all

over became people,

blind ministers who reserve for

themselves the term human.

And the national anthem sings

on with meaningless rhyme

For those who’ve come across the seas 

We’ve boundless plains to share

but the parallel refrains those

who can join this land’s lot.

And they exploit our humanity,

and they exploit our

vulnerability [ix] bewails

Ruddock of the pirates

oblivious to the plight of those

whose hope is exploited.

Till all that is left is a stone,

paragon of your self

cast in the harsh wilderness of

your outlandish stammer

language strikes thoughts to echo your

original substance.

V

Battos! I conjure your name to

this tear-gas desert land

where sleep unperturbed Ruddock dreams

reasonable steps have to be

taken to ensure the

Detention regime is maintained. [x]

Mistrusting eloquence and thought

and them ‘sylum seekers

this is the land proud of silence

born of a detention

regime where to voice anguish is

a weakness and a whinge.

And now the descendants of those

who led white explorers

on camel across wide deserts

in foreign tongue mute cries

and stitch their lips in Woomera

where language fails despair.

Residue of history, yours is

a lifestyle decision [xi]

says Ruddock while elsewhere it is

said that his hard-line stance

is scaring away skilled tourists

new name for émigré.

Proud of pacific solutions

islands of poverty

are blackmailed to take yer ugly

mongrels out o’ere and

has it ever been different

when was it different?

Whether convict of forced migration

or come to make it rich

Australians all let us rejoice

for we are young and free [xii]

unstitch your lips — recall — all come

for the freedom to be

VI

Brutalizing metamorphosis

in a dreamtime land

where at election time PM’s

in patent kadaitja

speak volumes and throw overboard

their lifebuoy of apathy.

And we are a marvellously

diverse society and

we are a better stronger and

richer nation because

of our ethnic diversity [xiii]

and all’s beaut and right mate.

Detention centres are not jails,

they have freedoms and liber-

ties and those freedoms and liber-

ties include sewing. [xiv] This is

said of lips despairing of words

by immigration spokesman.

The sealed tongues on fire with rage

are foreign tongues and who isn’t

migrant for an economy

of a better life away

from a currency of hard fear

again have you not noticed:

Every time people are enclosed

in razor wire not for what

they have done but for what they are [xv]

thuggery is the watchword

and the Woomera doctor has

to lose a job to dob in.

Nothing can prepare you for what

it’s like when you walk through those

gates. You have to pinch yourself to

remember you are still in

Australia and in a first-world

country [xvi] of shattered dreamtime.

VII

Battos, you are stone for betrayal

black gibber is your tongue and

its hard to tell what one’s eyes see not

who’s come for evil, who for good

such words Hesiod placed on your lips

and again you are black jasper.

Gold streaks true upon you and them

‘sylum seekers who heard Advance

Australia Fair did not understand

that a foreign tongue makes a foe

and even if you speak dinkum

fair twisted angerish to them.

By the rhythm of your speech

your foreign thoughts are treason

always this you and them and you

immiscible compounds of fear

float as scum, schaum of apathy

on the edge of continents.

A tongue that never was yours twists

and contorts to enunciate

borrowed sounds that hearers refuse

and language turns to chatter

among kinfolks trapped by betrayal

in the regions of silence.

The old ones come to die slowly

features of pain chiselled in stone

the youngest to live uncertain

mother tongue petrified in their throats

the rest suffer the past and hope

for new life in old idioms.

But slowly the old tongue falters

the new never your true own

silently intoning your prayers

a wrathful god is your sin

only when you are dust — shadow of rock

will settle — why we are actually here