Invasion Day
They declared her a virgin
and then pierced her repeatedly with a foreign flag
in the name of ius primæ noctis;
hic est terra nullius,
the original people declared animals
and placed without voices on the coins of this invasion.
A woman from Botany Bay had tattooed
four numbers in invisible ink
across her silenced lips,
in the evening 1788 was hallowed as the birth
of a nation already 40,000 years old.
The children remember the First Fleet;
Truganini has no place in a story of success,
hic est Terra Nullius,
stolen and never to be returned.
