by Jo McInerney
Carving a ‘new world’ out of bluestone,
your back bent, your hands swollen,
you could not have known
that the dark patches on the distant moon,
faint like a promise of home,
unsure like the smile of the girl who said no,
were moulded out of that self-same substance,
the same hard basalt that bounded your days.
- This area – in Melbourne’s inner north –
was not named Clifton Hill till 1871.