#1770 (think Captain Cook) - river he never saw

 

1770

(a Captain Cook kind of number)

5.308

4.xi.24

river he never saw

concerning William Manning

and the need to permanently remove his name from the map of Australia

 

this man

he has his name on the river, the valley

the church, the real estate, the gallery, the camping ground, the college

the Coles, the automotive, the map, the succulent garden, the school, the motel

and what else?

let’s re-name them all!  

 

why?

because this someone no one knows

who never came anywhere near here

he was the owner of bodies – the breathing, feeling kind

and some say souls

I won’t go so far

 

William Manning was very busy making the people he owned into money

 

the river is older than any of us

the river’s older than any name in any language

the river’s older than our kind  

 

he was a big man, big banker, member of pre-reform parliaments

twelve years Governor of the Bank of England

almost forty years on the board

he was a cash register of a man

 

and he thought it was good to own people

he thought it was right, there should be more of it

 

he’s still in the Hansard where he says

you can read it yourself

he says

how comfortable the negroes are – his slaves he means

and the slaves of his white English protestant peers

how well fed, with fruit trees, chickens in the yard

how they never have to beg

oh happy slaves!

 

‘named in his honour’, they say

the river, the valley and everything else?

one name leads to another

all of it taken for granted

 

I think it’s time for this to stop, don’t you

enough of William Manning

what did he ever do for you?

what did he do for Australia?

 

now I don’t think we should lightly rename the world

I don’t think tearing down every statue will make things right

better to re-caption, explain, to tell the truth

about how why things are the way they are

 

but there are some statues ought to come down

there are some names ought to go

 

‘named in honour’?

I have to ask what honour there is in owning others

in promoting this

in doing all in his power to prevent the abolition of slavery

throughout the whole wide world

because the sun never set on his empire

 

what honour in empire? one might ask

 

it’s time to remember who William Manning was

time to call him out

 

I call him enemy of humanity

I call him Mammon – avatar of greed

 

he died bankrupt too

as befits his moral compass

had to downsize to a London townhouse – poor poor William Manning

 

still stalks the Earth like a ghost abroad

still with us in these so many names

Manning this and Manning that

he’s spread like a stain all over the map

 

some people say

they’re used to a name

why change it?

that’s always been the name they say

but they’re wrong

there was a name before

there were names for everything before

 

and before there were names

the river ran

before there were people at all

 

let’s just ask the survivors

let’s ask the people from whom the river

from whom the valley was stolen

 

let’s ask

what’s this river – what’s this valley – called?

 

and it turns out it does have a name

in a language called Gathang

it’s called

Boolumbahtee

 

why don’t we just call it that?