Come unto these yellow sands,

And then take hands;

Curtsied when you have and kiss’d,

The wild waves whist.

He was so good at Serious Matters but the trouble was people never took him seriously, let alone kept dying around him. Nor did it help that he was the wrong person in his body, such that the precocious girl-child who claimed to be the better fit kept nagging him while they bobbed along the shipping lanes of the Indian Ocean.

He shouldn’t have shouted ‘Left!’ when it should have been ‘Right!’ to send his Humvee into an Afghani roadside bomb. He shouldn’t have left his darling wife and bubba-to-be alone in their Queenslander while he dabbled in giving witness to the whole of Sydney’s woes. He should have honoured his Sri Lankan heritage and his becoming-Australian more. He should have popped some pill or whatever to get rid of the Bard. He shouldn’t have married himself to the problem of the Australian Aborigines in its sexier form and its sweeter siren songs, only to find there are no words left – only the shuffle within the dandruff drifts of falling cigarette ash. His Petey-the-clown’s plaffy shoes didn’t help his image, either.

In fact, he wasn’t embedded in anything at all. He was merely bobbing along with the washes. And, concerning calm surfaces, very sloppily too. Plus, there were too many snakes in the world.