From the old Western world, we have come to explore
The wilds of this Western Australian shore;
In search of a country, we’ve ventured to roam,
And now that we’ve found it, let’s make it our home.
And what though the colony’s new, Sirs,
And inhabitants yet may be few, Sirs,
We see them encreasing here too, Sirs,
So Western Australia for me.
With care and experience, I’m sure ’twill be found
Two crops in the year we may get from the ground;
There’s good wood and good water, good flesh and good fish,
Good soil and good clime, and what more could you wish.
Then let every one earnestly strive, Sirs,
Do his best, be alert and alive, Sirs,
We’ll soon see our colony thrive, Sirs,
So Western Australia for me.
No lions or tigers we here dread to meet,
Our innocent quadrupeds hop on two feet;
No tithes and no taxes we now have to pay,
And our geese are all swans, as some witty folks say.
Then we live without trouble or stealth, Sirs,
Our currency’s all sterling wealth, Sirs,
So here’s to our Governor’s health, Sirs,
And Western Australia for me.
On Mount Eliza’s gently-swelling height
Musing of late I sat, and strained my sight
To catch within its orbs the full expanse
Of all the beauties which the scene enhance.
On such a spot as this, how sweet to feel
The charms of Nature o’er the senses steal;
When peace, reflected from its sunny spots,
Soothes the sad mind, and drowns all memr’y’s blots;
And as its genial influence leads us on,
We feel as calm as all we look upon.
Long ere by stern necessity’s command,
The emigrant had sought this distant land,
This lovely spot was mark’d by many a grace,
And all those hues which Nature loves to trace.
But then this beauty was of sombre hue,
And Nature’s wildness only met the view.
No fabric raised, whose bright looks catch the eyes,
And make us think of Home and all we prize.
What though the ‘Swan’ in graceful turnings glide,
No cheerful boat had ever stemm’d its tide,
Or merry barks, with white sails deck’d its face,
Or skimm’d its surface with their magic pace.
No sound disturb’d its silent, peaceful strand,
Save when the native savage, spear in hand
Came from his pathless woods to try his skill,
By hunger led, the finny prey to kill.
From fancied scenes like these I turn with pride
To view the works of man on every side.
To thee, fair Perth, where, peeping through the trees,
Thine houses glitter, and full well must please
The eyes of one who fondly loves to mark
Those fairy visions springing from the dark.
When first our hardy colonists, with zeal
Commenced their hopeful task with trusty steel
Not in their dreams, by fancy colour’d high,
E’er matur’d all that here is gay reality.
Thick clustering dwellings now uprear their heads,
In pleasing contrast to their leafy beds;
And verdant gardens, ranging side by side,
Skirting the river’s bank, are spreading wide.
How much we love the forms we’ve help’d to rear;
What deep and earnest thoughts of hope and fear
Do mark their fitful progress; if the things
Be pets of Art, or Poets’ wild imaginings,
Say then what thoughts shall fill the exile’s mind
When cast on foreign wilds a home to find;
Who daily strives his anxious cares to cheer,
And form around him all he holds most dear.
Then, if success he should at length attain,
He loves it more for all its toil and pain;
With pride surveys the scenes he’d help’ d to trace
On what was once a drear and desert place.
With feelings such as these I love the sight
Which greets the eye from off this wood-crown’d height,
And oft-times wander to this shady place,
With fondly-curious eye, intent to trace
Some new raised structure, or some pleasing green
That lends fresh beauty to the changeful scene;
Or watch beneath my view some freighted boat
In silence pass, and onwards gaily float
O’er Melville Water, dancing on its flight,
Its white sails lessening, tho’ it still looks bright;
Fleet messenger of Trade, that daily finds
A sure assistance from alternate winds.
The country round from this exalted place
Looks like a chart, on which you trace
The varied outlines of the pleasing scene,
Where waters glitter, and where woods look green.
Here Belches’ Point, whose stretching sides extend
And form, at length, the banks by which descend
Fair Canning’s stream, that flows with gentle force;
Or Swan’s blue flood, that comes from distant source.
There Headland juts, with base round-spreading, wide.
That forms a mimic bay on either side;
And, distant far, the lofty hills are seen
Raising their blue tops o’er the woods’ dark-green.
Oft as these scenes I view, new hopes will spring
Of future greatness which each year must bring;
And in my mind’s-eye fondly view each grace
Which fancy loves to form on many a place.
No dark’ning clouds, I trust, will ever rise
To blight the hopes I now so fondly prize.
Land of my adoption, onward is thy way,
In spite of all that prejudice can say.
Detraction’s tongue shall now no more have weight;
She’s done her worst, and sent forth all her hate.
No aid we need to make a prosperous land
But Councils wise, and Industry’s strong hand.
In these secure, let each one do his best;
Our sunny clime will work out all the rest.
First published 26 December 1835.
The Convicts are coming — oho! oho!
What a curse to the Swan! What a terrible blow!
‘No — devil a bit — don’t fear, my old bricks,
How much may we learn, if they’ll teach us their tricks.’
The Convicts are coming! oh dear, oh dear!
Don’t button your pockets — there’s nothing to fear,
For surely no Exile would venture to thieve,
When away from the prison, on a Ticket of leave.
The Convicts are coming! Hurrah! hurrah!
How it gladdens the heart of each anxious papa,
For how quickly his children may now learn a trade,
From that best of preceptors — a thief ready-made.
The Convicts are coming! Huzza! huzza!
If we want to pick locks, they will tell us the way,
Do we think to cut throats, or to blow out men’s brains,
They’ll show us the mode, if we’ll only take pains.
The Convicts are coming — what capital sport!
The road to the gallows made easy and short,
And long will the Swanites remember the day,
When the Convicts were sent to their shores by Earl Grey.
The Convicts are coming! the Orient’s in sight!
Then throw up your hats boys, illumine tonight!
Yes, throw up your hats, be as merry as grigs,
For I warrant they’ll soon put us up to their rigs.
The Convicts are coming! Huzza! huzza!
Three cheers for the Convicts, and three for Earl Grey!
Three cheers for the Swanites, and nine for each man,
Who devised and perfected this glorious plan.
First published 16 November 1849.
I am free! I am free! my heart leaps in my breast,
And each feeling, each thought with grief late opprest,
Now thrills through my frame, as if a new life
Were given in mercy to meet the world’s strife,
I am free, I am free!
For the sins of my youth I have suffered the pain —
I have felt the world’s enmity, coldness, disdain —
The good have passed by me, ’twas torture, ’twas madness
To see them avoid me in pitying sadness
But now I am free!
I am free, I am free! what rapture is mine —
How I bless, how adore that mercy Divine,
Which hath broken my bonds, which hath lightn’d my breast,
For my chains given liberty — peace for unrest!
Hurrah! I am free!
And ye among whom now my lot must be cast,
Ye never will bring back the thoughts of the past,
By rendering my heart with the talk of my sin,
Ye will judge what I am, not what I have been,
For now I am free!
Oh, receive me as one who wishes to show
That repentance has come from chains and from woe,
By the path he will lead in honesty here,
While serving you truly as year succeeds year,
For now I am free!
Ye will not, ye cannot point finger of scorn
At one now forsaken, alone and forlorn;
One far from the land of all he holds dear;
You never will make a marked stranger here,
For now I am free!
I feel you will not — Hurrah, I am free —
Free from bondage, from chains, from sin’s misery;
Free from feelings, from thoughts, that once led me to shame
but chained to the hope to regain my good name
I am free! I am free!
First published 3 September 1851.
Pale Ghosts! of fragrant things that grew among
The woods and valleys of my native land,
Phantoms of flowers I played with long ago:
Here are the scented violets I sought
In their cool nooks of verdure, and the bells
That fringed the mountain crag with loveliest blue;
Here are the flushing clusters of the May,
The dainty primrose on its slender stem;
And the forget-me-not — all faint and pale
As those dim memories of home that haunt
The exile’s wistful heart in banishment.
I look around and see
A thousand gayer tints; the wilderness
Is bright with gorgeous rainbow colouring
Of flowers that have no dear familiar names.
I see them closing ere the dews of night
Have touched their waxen leaflets: close they fold
Their tender blossoms through the darkened hours,
And will not open, though the fractious winds
Should wrestle with their roots and strain their stems.
They waken not until the softer airs,
Breathed from the rosy lips of early morn,
Come whispering, ‘lo! the lordly sun is nigh.’
But in my hand these frail memorials
Lie closely pressed; a slight electric link,
By which thought over-passes time and space,
To other hands that plucked them: other hands
That never more to any touch of mine
Shall thrill responsive. Blessed be those hands
With prosperous labours, fruitful through long years,
Of all life’s truest, tenderest charities.
Cool wind coming from the southern sea,
Filling white sails that homeward turn again,
And flit away like pale clouds o’er the main,
We hail you as you pass so fresh and free.
Warming or chilling ever as you flee,
Speed on soft breeze above the liquid plain,
Blow sweetest, freshest, blythest, when you gain
Fair England’s generous soil of Liberty.
Bear greetings from her children far away,
Who bless her in the new homes where they stay,
Turning with true hearts to the land they love.
Come with the song of birds, the breath of flowers,
Dance with the shadows under hazel bowers,
And fill with whispered music every grove.
They stand secure upon the mountain side,
Where, close behind, the crest of Lebanon
Towers bleak and bald above a thousand hills.
How solitary is thy mountain throne,
Dark remnant of tall woods that spread afar,
By mount and moraine in the days gone by.
They were the glory of a royal race,
Fallen like thy kindred from their majesty
And vanished from the place where they have been.
There are soft sounds upon the hushed mid-air,
The tender cooing of a hidden dove,
That keeps his watch beside his brooding mate;
The crush of crisp leaves to the wild goat’s tread
The hum of laden bees that heap their stores,
Within the hollows of the creviced rock:
The chime of rivulets that flow unseen,
The voice of wild birds in the native grove,
Stirring the air with sudden flights of song.
The everlasting hills are here: the sea
Washes their strong foundations: time and change
Have wrought their will elsewhere and passed these.
The snow is still on Lebanon, the sea
Hath still her fitful moods that come and go,
Making variety where there is no change.
The hills keep watch upon that restless tide,
And see! a lonely sail, where once the waves,
Gleamed to the measured dash of Syrian oars.
The ships of Tarshish come and go no more,
Bearing rich merchandise: rude fishers spread
Their nets where stood of old the ocean’s queen.
So moves the world: its kingdom and its powers
Change hands — and names and rival races press
Each other slowly from their vantage ground.
‘Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle.’
Since all that is mere dust in me shall die,
And this immortal soul must be undressed,
Leaving the form it hath so long possessed,
Laid as a cast-off garment folded by;
Give it kind earth upon thy breast a space,
Where with its kindred it may find a place,
Till the awaking voice shall echo through the sky.
O! let the silent heart and nerveless head,
Sleep where the lowly lie in hallowed graves,
Where through dark boughs the night breeze sobs and raves,
In fitful requiems o’er th’ unconscious dead;
Where in the stillness of the Sabbath day,
The thronging worshippers go up to pray,
And little children to Our Father’s house are led.
There, from the full-voiced choir the hymn shall rise,
And float and fall, and echoing hills repeat
From side to side reverberations sweet,
Till in the hollow glen it softly dies
From earth — but ever to the fount of light,
Speeds onward through th’ illimitable height,
To blend its faltering tones with psalms of Paradise.
The flowers I have loved shall bloom and fade,
Through many a winter’s gloom and summer’s glow,
And rushing from the hills the streams I know,
Shall make sweet music in the forest shade,
While I — afar upon another shore,
Where the eternal light shines evermore —
Bide peacefully till time’s revolving course is stayed.
A West Australian Bushman’s Story
Well, mate, you’ve asked about a fellow
You met to-day, in a black-and-yellow
Chain-gang suit, with a peddler’s pack,
Or with some such burden, strapped to his back.
Did you meet him square? No, passed you by?
Well, if you had, and had looked in his eye,
You’d have felt for your irons then and there;
For the light in his eye is a madman’s glare.
Ay, mad, poor fellow! I know him well,
And if you’re not sleepy just yet, I’ll tell
His story, — a strange one as ever you heard
Or read; but I’ll vouch for it, every word.
You just wait a minute, mate: I must see
How that damper’s doing, and make some tea.
You smoke? That’s good; for there’s plenty of weed
In that wallaby skin. Does your horse feed
In the hobbles? Well, he’s got good feed here,
And my own old bush mare won’t interfere.
Done with that meat? Throw it there to the dogs,
And fling on a couple of banksia logs.
And now for the story. That man who goes
Through the bush with the pack and the convict’s clothes
Has been mad for years; but he does no harm,
And our lonely settlers feel no alarm
When they see or meet him. Poor Dave Sloane
Was a settler once, and a friend of my own.
Some eight years back, in the spring of the year,
Dave came from Scotland, and settled here.
A splendid young fellow he was just then,
And one of the bravest and truest men
That I ever met: he was kind as a woman
To all who needed a friend, and no man —
Not even a convict — met with his scorn,
For David Sloane was a gentleman born.
Ay, friend, a gentleman, though it sounds queer:
There’s plenty of blue blood flowing out here,
And some younger sons of your ‘upper ten’
Can be met with here, first-rate bushmen.
Why, friend, I — Bah! curse that dog! you see
This talking so much has affected me.
Well, Sloane came here with an axe and a gun;
He bought four miles of a sandal-wood run.
This bush at that time was a lonesome place,
So lonesome the sight of a white man’s face
Was a blessing, unless it came at night,
And peered in your hut, with the cunning fright
Of a runaway convict; and even they
Were welcome, for talk’s sake, while they could stay.
Dave lived with me here for a while, and learned
The tricks of the bush, — how the snare was laid
In the wallaby track, how traps were made,
How ’possums and kangaroo rats were killed,
And when that was learned, I helped him to build
From mahogany slabs a good bush hut,
And showed him how sandal-wood logs were cut.
I lived up there with him days and days,
For I loved the lad for his honest ways.
I had only one fault to find: at first
Dave worked too hard; for a lad who was nursed,
As he was, in idleness, it was strange
How he cleared that sandal-wood off his range.
From the morning light till the light expired
He was always working, he never tired;
Till at length I began to think his will
Was too much settled on wealth, and still
When I looked at the lad’s brown face, and eye
Clear open, my heart gave such thought the lie.
But one day — for he read my mind — he laid
His hand on my shoulder: ‘Don’t be afraid,’
Said he, ‘that I’m seeking alone for pelf.
I work hard, friend; but ’tis not for myself.’
And he told me then, in his quiet tone,
Of a girl in Scotland, who was his own, —
His wife, — ’twas for her: ’twas all he could say,
And his clear eye brimmed as he turned away.
After that he told me the simple tale:
They had married for love, and she was to sail
For Australia when he wrote home and told
The oft-watched-for story of finding gold.
In a year he wrote, and his news was good:
He had bought some cattle and sold his wood.
He said, ‘Darling, I’ve only a hut, — but come.’
Friend, a husband’s heart is a true wife’s home;
And he knew she’d come. Then he turned his hand
To make neat the house, and prepare the land
For his crops and vines; and he made that place
Put on such a smiling and homelike face,
That when she came, and he showed her round
His sandal-wood and his crops in the ground,
And spoke of the future, they cried for joy,
The husband’s arm clasping his wife and boy.
Well, friend, if a little of heaven’s best bliss
Ever comes from the upper world to this,
It came into that manly bushman’s life,
And circled him round with the arms of his wife.
God bless that bright memory! Even to me,
A rough, lonely man, did she seem to be,
While living, an angel of God’s pure love,
And now I could pray to her face above.
And David he loved her as only a man
With a heart as large as was his heart can.
I wondered how they could have lived apart,
For he was her idol, and she his heart.
Friend, there isn’t much more of the tale to tell:
I was talking of angels awhile since. Well,
Now I’ll change to a devil, — ay, to a devil!
You needn’t start: if a spirit of evil
Ever came to this world its hate to slake
On mankind, it came as a Dukite Snake.
Like? Like the pictures you’ve seen of Sin,
A long red snake, — as if what was within
Was fire that gleamed through his glistening skin.
And his eyes! — if you could go down to hell
And come back to your fellows here and tell
What the fire was like, you could find no thing,
Here below on the earth, or up in the sky,
To compare it to but a Dukite’s eye!
Now, mark you, these Dukites don’t go alone:
There’s another near when you see but one;
And beware you of killing that one you see
Without finding the other; for you may be
More than twenty miles from the spot that night,
When camped, but you’re tracked by the lone Dukite,
That will follow your trail like Death or Fate,
And kill you as sure as you killed its mate!
Well, poor Dave Sloane had his young wife here
Three months, — ’twas just this time of the year.
He had teamed some sandal-wood to the Vasse,
And was homeward bound, when he saw in the grass
A long red snake: he had never been told
Of the Dukite’s ways, — he jumped to the road,
And smashed its flat head with the bullock-goad!
He was proud of the red skin, so he tied
Its tail to the cart, and the snake’s blood dyed
The bush on the path he followed that night.
He was early home, and the dead Dukite
Was flung at the door to be skinned next day.
At sunrise next morning he started away
To hunt up his cattle. A three hours’ ride
Brought him back: he gazed on his home with pride
And joy in his heart; he jumped from his horse
And entered — to look on his young wife’s corse,
And his dead child clutching his mother’s clothes
As in fright; and there, as he gazed, arose
From her breast, where ’twas resting, the gleaming head
Of the terrible Dukite, as if it said,
‘I’ve had vengeance, my foe: you took all I had.’
And so had the snake — David Sloane was mad!
I rode to his hut just by chance that night,
And there on the threshold the clear moonlight
Showed the two snakes dead. I pushed in the door
With an awful feeling of coming woe:
The dead was stretched on the moonlit floor,
The man held the hand of his wife, — his pride,
His poor life’s treasure, — and crouched by her side.
O God! I sank with the weight of the blow.
I touched and called him: he heeded me not,
So I dug her grave in a quiet spot,
And lifted them both, — her boy on her breast, —
And laid them down in the shade to rest.
Then I tried to take my poor friend away,
But he cried so woefully, ‘Let me stay
Till she comes again!’ that I had no heart
To try to persuade him then to part
From all that was left to him here, — her grave;
So I stayed by his side that night, and, save
One heart-cutting cry, he uttered no sound, —
O God! that wail — like the wail of a hound!
’Tis six long years since I heard that cry,
But ’twill ring in my ears till the day I die.
Since that fearful night no one has heard
Poor David Sloane utter sound or word.
You have seen to-day how he always goes:
He’s been given that suit of convict’s clothes
By some prison officer. On his back
You noticed a load like a peddler’s pack?
Well, that’s what he lives for: when reason went,
Still memory lived, for the days are spent
In searching for Dukites; and year by year
That bundle of skins is growing. ’Tis clear
That the Lord out of evil some good still takes;
For he’s clearing this bush of the Dukite snakes.
Penal Colony of Western Australia, 1857
The sun rose o’er dark Fremantle,
And the Sentry stood on the wall;
Above him, with white lines swinging,
The flag-staff, bare and tall:
The flag at its foot — the Mutiny Flag —
Was always fast to the line, —
For its sanguine field was a cry of fear,
And the Colony counted an hour a year
In the need of the blood-red sign.
The staff and the line, with its ruddy flash,
Like a threat or an evil-bode,
Were a monstrous whip with a crimson lash,
Fit sign for the penal code.
The Sentry leant on his rifle, and stood
By the mast, with a deep-drawn breath;
A stern-browed man, but there heaved a sigh
For the sight that greeted his downward eye
In the prison-square beneath.
In yellow garb, in soldier lines,
One hundred men in chains;
While the watchful warders, sword in hand,
With eyes suspicious keenly scanned
The links of the living lanes.
There, wary eyes met stony eyes,
And stony face met stone.
There was never a gleam of trust or truce;
In the covert thought of an iron loose,
Grim warder and ward were one. …
V.
An arid, dusty landwind, wakens Herbert
From the Sahara of a dream; with lips
Parched, while a heat like powder frets the skin.
A drought is in the air; and the grey clouds
Hanging aloft, or mistlike on the hills,
Tell not of moisture to his practised eye, —
But thirsty heat, lapping the wilderness
With tongues of fire!
Stooping beside the waters,
He draws large draughts, till, eager to embrace
The rapture of their coolness, he leaps up
To cast aside his garments; but a black
And lurid pillar of smoke, seeming at hand
Tho’ leagues between them lie, has fascinated
His watchful gaze, and dashed a sudden fear
Thro’ all his veins, — for those devouring flames
Are raging homeward!
Snatching a light axe,
Wherewith he scarred the trees to mark his route,
He cuts a footing in the thick, smooth bark
Of a white-gum, whose branchy crown appears
High o’er the common woods; and, step by step,
Scaling its lofty pillar, gains the landing
Of a cross bough, and scans the distant glow.
‘Home! home!’ he cries: ‘Bucephalus, good nag!
Drink well, and splash the waters; for I trow
We go thro’ fires to-day!’
And with stretched arms
Half compassing the stately stem, he slides
Swift to the foot, and gains his steed, and girths
The saddle tightly; and without a thought
Of food, or perils he must brave, or ought
But one great fear — for those he left at home, —
Gives his brave nag the spur, and on, on, on,
Thro’ the thick boughs whose branches beat his face,
Whose stretched-out arms he, stooping, scarce avoids;
While not for thicket-thorns, nor trees down-fallen,
Nor boulders rough, nor banks precipitous
Of wild ravines where winter torrents streamed, —
Bucephalus makes pause, nor turns aside!
Now have they reached the rear-guard of the flames;
Black ruin girt about with fallen limbs
That smoulder as they lie.
On! on, good horse!
The heat grows fierce, the earth seems all aglow;
Branches are falling round them; forky tongues
Leap o’er the roadway that alone can save
Horse and his rider, from the battle-front
That lowers on either side!
On! on, good horse!
Brave rider, clasp your arms about his neck,
And cheer him, lest his terror leave no choice
But death, — death for ye both!
The hot flames wrestle:
Irruption fierce, mid seas of lava glow;
Devouring billows, feeding as they roll,
On bark and cones of Banksia, fronded Palms,
Ferns, Casuarinas; woods that scent the flames;
Charred trunks Xanthorrhoean, with their rods and reeds
Blazing; while veteran trees thro’ trunk and bough,
Time-hollowed, feel the rage of hidden fires,
Roaring and writhing thro’ their branchy flues,
With furnace heat: and over hill and plain
Rolls the dire flood, — a wilderness of ruin, —
A burning world!
Fly! fly, ye flocks and herds!
Ye horses, spurn the flames with sounding hoofs!
Seek safety — for no shelter can ye trust —
On some charred pasture where ye fed before!
And fly, good steed! and fly, brave youth; for those
Thou lovest are in danger!
Now the homesteads
Lie at his feet, and all the upper slope
Is blazing; while in vain the labourers toil,
With leafy boughs to beat the torrent back,
Swift rushing thro’ the cornfields.
‘Home!’ he cries;
And leaping to the earth a flaming brand
Plucks from the fires, and to the standing corn,
Hard by the doors of each imperilled home,
The torch applies; and beats the rising flames
Back on their fellows, — till the torrents meet,
Devouring and devoured, in mutual death.
So, when fierce foes upon the frontiers hang
Of his dear fatherland, the valorous hind,
Grown warrior in his country’s need, holds forth
The fatal torch to harvests he hath reared, —
Rather himself to hunger than to yield
Such forage to the spoiler.
Not a spark
Has touched the precious roof-trees; but, alas!
The golden grain, the labours of the year,
Lie black upon the smoking fields, unhoused,
Reaped with the brazen sickle of the flames.
Cattle on yonder hill rush to and fro,
Scared, lowing wildly, as the burning tide
Beats upward fiercely, and no outlet leaves,
Save one straight path arched overhead with fire!
Hurrah! a horseman thro’ the flaming gorge
Dashes, low bending o’er his foaming steed!
Unheard amid the roar the stockwhip smites
The riven air, and quivers on the flank
Of dazed cattle, that the archway view,
And dare not pass, and dare not turn again;
Bewildered, blinded, — till the lash
Decides and turns the balance of their fears;
And headlong plunging, snorting thro’ the flames,
The frantic herd are driven!
The archway bends,
And the boughs crack; and like a javelin
A splintered branch strikes, rooted in the earth.
Hurrah! the horseman hath the open gained:
Hurrah! — But his steed trembles, and his knees
May fail, ere he can pass that heaving bulk,
Asunder parting, — quivering to the fall!
Bucephalus bounds forward, and the boughs
Strike on him as they fall, and he has passed; —
But Frank! Frank Herbert! Frank the hero-boy! —
Where is he? — and the neighbours up the bank
Are hurrying; and Ruth and Elsie breathe
Hot, gasping prayers, and fly o’er smoking fields
To learn if he among the fires hath perished,
In saving life that thousand-thousand-fold
Were nought to his.
Under rough boughs that spared the flying steed,
But swept his rider down. The burning leaves
They tear away, and quench the smouldering trunk,
Within whose hollow Ruth and Elsie oft
Have sheltered from a shower. Then strong, rough hands,
Yet trembling in their eagerness, bear up
The cruel branches; — and the motion stirs
A splintered wound; and hark, they hear a groan.
‘Bless his dear heart,’ cries one, — ‘he is not dead,
And we may save him. Gently, gently, there:
Let me creep under, and the splinters loose
That bite his wound.’
And the strong men stand round,
And firmly, patiently, bear up such a load
Of massive boughs as forces the big drops
From their swart brows: and still the other seeks
To loosen without pain the jagged wood
That rankles in the poor boy’s wounded arm.
‘’Tis broken, sure enough; and badly, too’
He mutters: ‘Brave young master! I’d as lief
Have died myself, or broken every limb,
As see him suffer! Aye, he’ll never groan,
If he can hold his breath; but it is hard,
Hard, — very hard; and though I try my best
To save him pain, I feel the wincing spasms
At every touch. Now bear a hand; — yet stay, —
His foot is badly hurt: poor lad! poor fellow!
I doubt he has as lief the trees had struck
Another blow, and finished!’
The boughs are higher lifted, and a pale,
Scarce living form is borne down tenderly
To his sad home: and there are women’s tears,
And rough men dash their hands across their eyes,
And turn away; and Elsie hides her head,
Smothering weary sobs: and only Ruth —
Ruth with the anguish deepest at her heart —
Bears a brave face, and, bending over him,
Swaths his poor helpless limbs, and bathes his brow
With fragrant waters; and, amid the shade
Of darkened rooms, moves like a blessed spirit, —
A beauteous orb, — folding her lunar grey
Of sadness in the crescent-wings of love.
To the Editor of the Inquirer & Commercial News
My Dear Mr. Editor, — A short time ago as I was sauntering along one of the streets of Busselton on a gloomy evening I happened to meet an aged Chief of the name of Bungert, who complained bitterly to me that the Government had not forwarded the usual supply of blankets this season for distribution amongst his people, and requested that I would write to His Excellency on the subject. The enclosed is a translation of what he desired me to say, and if you think it worthy of a corner in your valuable journal you are welcome to it.
— Yours truly,
To His Excellency the Governor.
To you, our generous ruler,
I come with this appeal,
On behalf of those, my people,
Whose wants I keenly feel.
I approach you with submission,
Turn not your face away;
But listen to a care-worn chief
Whose locks are turning gray.
Our ranks are quickly thinning,
It grieves me to look round;
I see that in a few short years
Our place will not be found.
Where are those countless numbers
That once were blithe and gay?
Where are our wives and children?
Ah! tell me where are they?
The white man came amongst us,
He proved a faithless seer, —
He introduced tobacco,
He plied our sons with beer.
He drove away the kangaroo,
Our hunting grounds laid waste,
And sadly now we miss that food,
So suited to our taste.
The winter has come round again,
The nights are chill and cold;
It is not for the strong I ask,
’Tis for the weak and old.
We cannot now find bookas,
Our little ones to swathe;
I therefore ask for clothing,
’Tis blankets that I crave.
Oh grant me this petition,
Turn not from me away;
And I your faithful servant
For ever more will pray.
Published 30 July 1873.
J ust at the hour when dusky twilight fades,
O n me the dearest eyes of love incline,
S erenely calm above the darkling shades
E ach peeping star on my delight doth shine.
P indaric ode or Spenser’s flowing line
H as not the voice to sing the joys I mean;
I ne’er can tell how sweet a lot is mine,
N o words for me can ever paint the scene,
E nchanted, I can utter naught but Josephine.
Poor child of earth – The rising sun,
That tips the hills with mellow ray,
No more shal’t rouse thee from thy sleep,
Or cheer thee on thy lonely way.
No more with spear, and weapons rude,
Shal’t thou roam thro’ the woodland dell,
No more midst festive scenes shall sing
The wildsome songs you loved so well.
Here must thou sleep, the sleep of death,
For earth has claimed the earth she gave,
And thou must rest a briefsome space
Within this lone sequestered grave.
The tree which bends its head o’er thine,
Is better far than marble stone,
The birds will chant their sweetest lay
Around thy first and only home.
Dark was thy line, but who shall say,
‘Thy heart was blacker than is mine!’
At the last dread day who can tell,
Thy face, shall not with glory shine.
Published 16 July 1881.
He burnt the spice
Of paradise
Within a golden bowl,
And from the swinging censer broke
The sumptuous smoke
That softly stole
In blue perfumes
Among the altars dim,
And steeped his soul
In incense of the Seraphim;
For it was won
From poppy blooms
That grew in valleys of the sun
What time he heard
The mellow bird
Awake with radiant ecstasy
The morning’s stars in Heaven’s sky,
And from the night
Drew dividends of rare delight,
Until it seemed his very soul
Was floating from the golden bowl.
The night descends in glory, and adown the purple west
The young moon, like a crescent skiff, upon some fairy quest,
Has dropped below the opal lights that linger low and far
To havens that are beaconed by the Pilot’s evening star;
And slowly, softly, from above the darkness is unfurled
A wondrous curtain loosened on the windows of the world.
Then suddenly, like magic, where smoke-stacks fumed the while,
Ten thousand lights flash out aflame along the Golden Mile.
And thro’ the dusky gauze that falls upon the looming mines
Dim spires and spars of poppet heads in faintly broken lines
Grow clearer to the vision, till the shadow picture seems
The argosies from half the world i’ the misty Port o’ Dreams;
And lo! where golden Day had reigned in radiant robes of blue,
A god of joy and hope, who thrilled the sons of toil and rue,
Now comes the Queen of Starland forth to scatter with a smile
Her diamonds that flash and blaze along the Golden Mile.
And all the night a thousand stamps in ceaseless rhythm roar
Are beating out the tragic gold from endless streams of ore,
These harnessed giants of the will that so are trained and taught
To answer to the sentient touch and catch the thrill of thought,
From nerve to nerve that quivers thro’ the animated steel,
And makes it live and makes it move and strength emotions feel,
Till in their voices music comes insistent all the while
Reverberating massive chants along the Golden Mile.
And down below, a thousand feet, a thousand miners tear
The golden ore, the glistening ore that holds such joy and care;
Ah! down below, another world, with hopes, desires and dreams —
Such playthings as the tyrant Fate in fickle will beseems.
Ah! down below where panting drills are eating thro’ the rock,
Where life and death are lurking in the fire’s convulsive shock, —
Where many a sturdy hero delves within the lode’s long aisle
To win him love, the gold of love, along the Golden Mile.
Now speeding westward flies the train into the wondrous night,
The engine pulsing as a man who strives with strenuous might;
Its great heart seems to throb and throb, its breath comes fierce and warm
To vitalize the force that sleeps along its sinuous form;
So dreaming back from Somerville, a sad thought fills the air,
And starts a poignant fancy o’er the wondrous city where
From Lamington to Ivanhoe there’s many a tear and smile
Beneath the myriad lights that gleam along the Golden Mile.
How bright they glitter down the streets o’er camp and mill, and mine,
The reflex of that mystic stream that flows from dark to shine —
The brother of that rival spark that wakes from mystery,
And grows to life and will and power and human entity;
The confluent currents of the mind that holds us all in fief,
And gives to some the thrill of joy, to some the pang of grief —
Ah! many noble deeds are done and many that are vile
Where love is lost and love is won, along the Golden Mile.
So midnight chimes across the gloom, as we are speeding west,
And sirens screech the respite sweet that ends in sleep and rest;
The cool breeze meets the tired brow and whispers gentler tales
That seem to murmur with the metre sung by wheels and rails.
The night has grown in glory and from out the purple dome
Ten thousand stars are gleaming to show the wanderer home;
While fainter fades the glimmer, like a city on an isle,
Till swallowed in the darkness are the lights along the Mile.
The western night is cool and sweet after the burning day,
And faintly clang the camel bells; in echoes, far away;
For lo! the wind is hushed as tho’ the hollows held their breath,
In the sudden solemn silence of the mediator, Death.
Ah! the horror of the hollows,
Where a demon lurks and follows
The bitter fight for gold,
Ah! the hideous embraces,
And the pain on beaten faces
That I have withered in his hold.
A-down the flats and thro’ the bush the camp fires flicker bright;
The shadows looming darkly from the glimmer of the light;
Where spectre men ’neath spectre trees are met to bivouac
The pilots of a legion that is eager on their track.
Of an army coming, coming,
On their panning dishes drumming
With a tump-a-tump-tum;
And across the sand plains singing,
To the roll-up that is ringing,
Where the siren whispers ‘Come!’
The balsam of the spicewood burning, fills the stilly air,
Like some cathedral incense that has floated everywhere;
While starry lights upon the heavenly altar shine,
And angels kneel to worship, and men are made divine.
Are the brave before the altar,
They whose love could never falter.
Hark! the memory of voices
That inspire us and rejoice us.
From the spaces hope enshrined.
A dusky gauze that’s woven from the twilight’s deep’ning shades,
Has fallen o’er the distant verge, and settles in the glades;
A gossamer that hides the harshness of a cruel face,
And softens into beauty all the terrors of the place.
Like the wondrous weft that covers
The golden dreams of lovers,
In the sunrise litten years.
Or the gentle smile that hideth,
All the sorrow that abideth,
In the ache of unshed tears.
But lo! from out the silent gloom, there comes a dulcet din,
A soft allegro rippling from a merry mandolin;
And o’er the strings it dances in a musical tirade,
Or suddenly it changes to a lover’s serenade.
Ah! the tenderness and longing,
Put in pink-a-pink-a-ponging,
And the strength of love confess’d,
For a lady who is thinking,
As she sees the star-eyes blinking
O’er the farness of the West.
And list’ning to the trembling trills, the pink-a-pank-a-pink.
We only want to dream and dream, and never want to think;
The way the player lullaboos, in stilly darkness hid,
The grief of ‘Swanee River’ or the spell of ‘Old Madrid’ —
With the castanets and dances,
And the casements and guitars!
Yet here in soul comparing,
There is chivalry and daring
Beneath the southern stars.
So lying on the cooling sands, and dreaming to the sky,
We hear the stillness broken by a tinkly lullaby;
And all the world’s a hollow, with a single joy therein,
That is quiv’ring in the music of the magi’s mandolin.
For our fears and foes are banished,
And our weariness has vanished,
With a pink-a-pink-a-pong.
And in fancies that are thronging,
All our loves, our lives, our longing
Are concerted in a song.
But, hush! the charm is ended, and in slumberland released.
We’ll wander ere the flaming eye is glaring in the East;
When we must strike the outer pads, that lead where peril hides,
And stake our lives and longing and, all the world besides.
Ah! the world is wide for roaming,
Yet the rovers will be homing,
Like the doves when night is nigh.
But they’ll dream of golden trammels
And the mandolins and camels,
And the singer’s lullaby.
O! heavenly sweet the pearly morn,
With the still river fast asleep,
And all the youngling day unborn,
While fleecy clouds like flocks of sheep
Are straying by the raying east
And dawn makes ready for her feast,
The trees that fringe the river bank
Lie, too, beneath the crystal tide
As ’twere some fairy artist sank
A perfect etching that defied
The river (as it laps and dips)
Unsmeared by the wet fingertips,
The Hills white veiled seemed bent in prayer,
Such little hills to climb so high,
Half circling in their garden care
The City ’neath the leaning sky,
And still by bank and bole runs on
The river in the rising sun,
Nearby a Mill wan with the years,
And quaintly old is proud to stand
The legacy of pioneers
Sure of the future of the land —
A precious monument apart
Of virile men, of lion heart …
The river passes by the town
A mimic sea in morning calm;
Above a greening crest looks down
Beyond the circle of its arm,
Where cressets of the red gum blaze
And wattle lights her golden rays,
There King’s Park keeps her bushland still
(That every wilding flower dyes)
To frolic free by dale and hill.
And just below the City lies,
Where the smoke spirals, grey and blue,
Curl on the new day breaking through.
The town hall spire that is our pride,
Delicate, poised against the sky
The City’s mist doth override
And round it homing pigeons fly.
I stand a moment then apart
And seem to hear a people’s heart.
Aye! well I know that dreams come true
When hand and heart and brain create
The larger vision coming through,
When strong souls serve and serving wait
The newer day that shall be born,
In the sun of another morn …
The placid river bears along
The freighted barges from the sea.
Singing afresh some matin song
Of days that were and days to be,
And when the breeze and river meet
The salt foam sprays the City’s feet;
By Blackwall Reach and Crawley Bay,
On the Swan River’s silvery breast
I’ve seen her white winged feet at play …
This stilly morning of the West
I sail my skiff of memories
Adown the river to the seas.
It’s New Year morn, alone, aloud,
Cathedral chimes are floating by;
Thoughts like to prayer about me crowd,
And all the silence underlie
That a fine people find their goal,
With heart steel-true and striving soul.
When I am dead
Bring me no roses white,
Nor lilies spotless
And immaculate,
But from the garden roses red,
Roses full blown
And by the noon sun kissed,
Bring me the roses
That my life has missed
When I am dead.
Slowly, slowly, along the street they come;
Horses and men, and men and horses — so,
With boom of drum and rattle of kettle drum,
Marching, marching, with solemn step and slow.
The horses shake their manes, their bridles jingle:
The men march on in silence with bowed head;
And here in crowds, and there alone and single
Men watch, and wait the passing of the dead.
Afar the gleam of steel, a flash of light:
And now a skirl of pipes the wind gusts blow,
Like antic ghosts at revel in the night
Mocking the misery of human woe.
They come, they pass, and like a dream, are not,
Fading in dust of earth about them thrown:
Far off the sudden crack of rifle shot,
The call to rest and peace on bugles blown.
’Twas an unpretentious grog-shop in a dusty mining centre,
Flanked about with empty bottles that were growing more and more.
People called it the ‘Excelsior’, but ‘Abandon hope who enter’,
Would have been a fitter legend for the board above the door.
Alexander was the landlord — Mr. Patrick Alexander —
Strangers mostly called him Alec., but his boon companions Pat.;
And his usual coign of vantage was a broken-down verandah,
Where the township’s hardest cases sprawled and swore and smoked and spat.
Then a local paper’s par spread one morn the news afar
That an angel in a bodice had appeared behind the bar;
And the frenzied rush that followed marked an epoch new, methinks,
For that little corner shanty, where Belinda brought the drinks.
For she seemed indeed an angel to our starved imaginations,
Though the unromantic Alec. used to claim her for a niece.
Not a man but would have bartered for her smile the Wealth of Nations,
From the youngest new chum digger to the sergeant of police;
And the magic of her presence shed a subtle hanky-panky
On that dingy shrine of Bacchus, and the crowd assembled there,
Till the hardest heart was softened, and the synonym for ‘blanky’
Seldom rose above a whisper on the whisky-scented air.
Though the rival barmaids there, in the fashion of the fair,
Tossed their heads in scornful comment on Belinda’s golden hair
Though they pulled her charms to pieces and declared she was a minx,
No one swerved from his allegiance — where Belinda brought the drinks.
Real chained lightning was the whisky, and the rum sent strangers raging,
But Belinda’s thirsty lovers soon made havoc in the stock;
And the landlord’s smile grew daily more expansive and engaging,
For the rows of empty bottles would have paved an acre block.
Never knights of old so loyally mustered to their sovereign’s banner
As the boys from shaft and windlass to the queen of Alec.’s bar:
Popping corks and jingling glasses nearly drowned the cracked ‘pianner’,
When the local Paderewski played ‘’E dunno where ’e are’.
Nights of revel, days of graft, when our luck was in we laughed,
And when Fortune frowned, forgot her in the fiery cups we quaffed —
Memory’s chain still binds them to me, and the strongest of the links
Takes me back to Alec.’s parlour — where Belinda brought the drinks.
But one bitter day she left us, and a storm of lamentations
Echoed through the tents and humpies in the days our darling went;
E’en the wild seductive ‘two-up’ lost its ancient fascinations.
And the usual Sunday dog-fight seemed a spiritless event.
Nevermore shall I behold her, but my recollection lingers
On that tiny winsome figure, conjured up from years gone by;
Still I feast my eyes in visions on those ring’d and tapering fingers,
Flitting from the fierce Jamaica to the flasks of ‘Real Mackay’.
Nevermore! aye, there’s the rub! O that township in the scrub,
And the hurried nightly bee-line from the camp-fire to the pub!
Every other scene of revel into dull oblivion sinks
By the side of Alec.’s shanty — where Belinda brought the drinks.
The race for gold that charms the bold
Finds toil for man and beast,
And they, who left the East of old,
Are daily streaming East.
The whips that crack along the track
Are strong — the horses, too;
And strong the words the teamsters use
Along the road to Cue,
The words they use
To mark their views,
Along the road to Cue.
O, fierce beats down the sun o’erhead,
High poised in cloudless skies;
Thick lies the dust beneath our tread
And thicker swarm the flies.
But flies and heat and dust and thirst
And nags that pull askew,
They each and all get soundly cursed
Along the road to Cue,
Bad, worse and worst,
They all get cursed
Along the road to Cue.
I’ve seen some travellers look askance,
And others chafe and fret;
I’ve known the passing camel’s glance
Betoken pain’d regret —
He cannot make his protest heard,
Unlike the cockatoo
Which shrieking flies from many a word
Along the road to Cue,
The horse-power words
Which shock the birds
Along the road to Cue.
Thames bargemen hide resourceful lips
Behind their blackened pipes,
So do the mates of sailing ships
That fly the Stars and Stripes.
I’ve heard them both of old, and each
Can objurgate ‘a few’,
But loftier heights than these they reach
Along the road to Cue,
Choice gems of speech
Beyond our reach,
Along the road to Cue.
I’ve heard bluff costers bless their mokes
In soft enraptur’d tones;
I know the way the gangers coax
The men who lift the stones.
And yet I somehow fancy both
Could learn a thing or two —
Some up-to-date appropriate oath,
Along the road to Cue,
Some brand-new oath
Of native growth
Along the road to Cue.
’Tis sad that wit should waste its fire
And rhetoric spend its force
Upon the unresponsive wire,
The unreflecting horse.
The waste, per hour, of motive power,
If half I say be true
Would surely drive ten head of stamps
To crush the quartz at Cue,
Ten head of stamps
To wake the camps
Between Day Dawn and Cue.
In truth I never knew before
(For all the songs I’ve sung)
One half the plenteous verbal store
That marks our Saxon tongue.
So don’t decline this wreath of mine,
’Tis honest merit’s due,
Knights of the lash, who earn your cash
Along the road to Cue,
Who ply the lash
With ‘blank’ and ‘dash’
Along the road to Cue.
The following lines were picked up on the North
Fremantle Bridge last Monday:
TOTHERSIDER:
I stood at the Weld Club corner
As the clock was striking the hour,
And a storm swept over the city
With a mist and a hailing shower.
I watched the Brokers hurrying
And playing at Bulls and Bears,
With tears in their eyes and noses
And blasphemy in their prayers.
How often — oh! how often
Have I stood on that spot to groan,
For the turn up of weary nothing
And a dinner of sand alone.
How often — oh! how often
Have I uttered a bitter curse,
That ever I left my country
For something ten times worse.
PERTHITE:
I stood at that corner also
And have watched the hungry leer,
Of the men who’ve left their country
To seek their fortunes here.
I’ve watched their listless strolling,
Their want of grit was plain,
It’s always the bloomin’ country
And never themselves they blame.
How often — oh! how often
Have I uttered a brief refrain,
And wished that we could ship them
Back to their homes again.
I think as I stand amongst them,
That if rightly understood,
They left their bloomin’ country
For their bloomin’ country’s good.
Published 16 August 1894.
O, calm and clear the liar lies
Who writes reports on mines;
Behold what knowledge deep and wise
His legend intertwines.
But ah, if he should own the lease
Supposed to hold the lode —
Behold his lying pow’rs increase —
Observe his matchless mode.
He may not have an ounce of quartz,
The reef his lease might miss,
But in his Rougemont-like reports
THE
REEF
RUNS
DOWN
LIKE
THIS.
But if perchance the reef is found
And proven rich and wide,
Who pegged him side by side,
He can’t peg in upon the end,
That’s taken long ago.
And if the lode-line doesn’t bend
He hasn’t Buckley’s show;
But shifting reefs is labor light,
And perfect is his bliss,
So as his lease is on the right —
It
under
lies
like
this.
But should his lease located be
Upon the left-hand side,
The reef in which the gold shows free
Towards the left he’ll guide.
For that which baulks a modest man
A mining scribe can do.
And alterations on a plan
Will swing a reef askew;
So once again with pencil deft
He plumbs the earth’s abyss
And as his lease is on the left
The
reef
runs
down
like
this.
But if he has no part or share
Around the golden ground,
A tinker’s toss he doesn’t care
If any reef is found.
He cares not if it goes an ounce
Or only goes a grain,
But if the owners try to bounce
They’re soon amongst the slain.
He slays them as a mad Malay,
Slays foemen with a kris,
And in the mining news next days —
T
H
E
I
R
R
E
E
F
C
U
T
S
O
U
T
L
I
K
E
T
H
I
S
We are sated of songs that hymn the praise
Of a world beyond our ken;
We are bored by the ballads of beaten ways,
And milk and water men;
We are tired of the tales that lovers told
To the cooing, amorous dove;
We have banished the minstrelsy of old,
And the lyric of languid love.
While we stand where the ways of men have end,
And the untrod tracks commence,
We weary of songs that poets penned
In pastoral indolence.
The sleepy sonnet that lovers make
Where weeping willows arch
Cannot the passionate soul awake
Of men who outward march.
Our harps are hung in the towering trees,
And the mulga low and grey
Our ballads are sung by every breeze
That flogs the sea to spray;
We want no lay of a moonlit strand,
No idyll of daisied mead,
For the rhymes that our hearts can understand
Are the rhymes that our hearts can read.
I entered the cage for the ‘Number Nine’;
A trucker paused at the brace to say,
As he left the depths of the gloomy mine,
‘A man was killed in the stopes to-day!’
Then the winder sang as we rushed below,
And the plats flashed upward merrily.
And so to toil. Yet it came to me:
‘’Tis a sorrowful thing for some to know.’
There is clatter and crash in the dusty stopes,
As the rock-drills dash at the good grey ore.
There is labor and sweat, for the company hopes
For a quote in the share-list of one point more.
There is wealth to grasp: there are divs. to pay;
And what is a laborer more or less?
’Mid the din and clamor now who would guess
That a man was killed in the mine to-day!
So the skips roll on — there’s a tally to make,
For the stamps are hungry and iron-shod.
Whose lips could quiver? Whose heart could break
While there’s grist for the mills of the rich man’s God?
There’s a ten-bob wage for the risk he ran —
The paltry risk. If he got passed out,
’Tis nothing to worry our heads about —
He opened a job for a luckier man!
He was only a shoveller — put it aside
Where there’s gold to win such things must be.
He gave his pound to the rich man’s pride;
And what is a life? Yet it came to me:
There may be somebody far away,
Some soft-eyed woman whose tears would flow,
And whose cheek would pale if she did but know
That a man was killed in the mine to-day!
Rather rowdy,
Dingy, cloudy,
Dusty, dirty, dim, and dowdy,
Thirsty throats to mock.
Can’t mistake ’er;
Droughty slaker,
Six pubs to the blooming acre —
That’s the Boulder Block.
Weary hummers,
Beery bummers,
Cadging ‘deeners’, ‘zacks’ and ‘thrummers’,
Mooching in a flock,
Frontispieces hard and chilly,
Sparring pots off ‘Dick’ and ‘Billy’
(’Nough to drive a barman silly)
On the Boulder Block.
Sulphur frying,
Kinchins crying
Cyanide from sand dumps flying,
Senses reel and rock.
Whistles squealing,
Black smoke reeling,
Bingie gets a curious feeling
On the Boulder Block.
Crowd delighting,
Grimy derelicts exciting
Sympathy from mugs;
‘Have-beens’ viewing
Past with rueing
(Watching for a chance of chewing
Ears of tender ‘lugs’).
Miners drinking,
Crib-cans clinking —
Just off shift and no one shrinking
(Never mind the clock!).
Ragged shirt and gleaming collar,
Empty ‘kick’ and mighty dollar;
Health, and wealth, and grief, and squalor —
That’s the Boulder Block.
Did you ever hear of the ‘poverty pot’?
When the stone is sampled and crushed and panned,
If your prospect’s dollying rich or not,
You’ve always the ‘poverty pot’ on hand.
And the blood may leap in each pulsing vein
As a glittering ‘tail’ shows all you wish;
Or lag, as the glint of a single grain
Looks up from the lap of the swirling dish.
But whatsoever the luck you’ve got,
It all goes into the ‘poverty pot’.
Through saltbush stretches and ranges grey,
When the dews of the morning gemmed our feet,
Where bell-birds piped at the break of day,
And the smell of the scrub was wild and sweet,
We’ve tramped to the tune of a swinging lilt,
And the hills sent back the tuneful clink
Of the knapping picks, as the Sun god spilt
His glory of gold o’er the morning’s brink.
And the mists of the night, diaphanous
Rolled back — and the day was there for us!
And then when the evening shades grew long,
With a slower step on the backward track,
While hearts and lips weaved a fairy throng
Of glittering dreams round the specimen sack.
The ‘leader’ we struck in the ironstone —
The reef we found in the diorite fall —
(Oh, the sunset gleams on the hills alone)
But the dish and the dolly have proved them all.
The dreams and the hopes — they are half forgot,
But the gold went into the ‘poverty pot’.
There’s a ‘poverty pot’ for us everyone.
It holds no sparkle of gilded ore,
But the gem of a kindly action done
May help to fill it with wealth galore,
The cheery smile or the shilling to lend,
The word that heartened a faltering mate,
The blow that was struck for a feebler friend,
The burden lightened of half its weight.
They are gems of gold, tho’ we know it not —
And they all go into the ‘poverty pot’.
And so when the last lead peters out,
And we cast the hammer and drill aside;
We’ll turn our faces with hope or doubt,
To the dim grey hills of the Great Divide;
We’ll know at the end when the Battery Boss
Has cleaned us up, and our luck is told,
If life’s long battle has won but dross,
Or crowned our days with unfading gold.
And if we crush but a low-grade lot —
Perhaps we’ll be judged by our ‘poverty pot’.
First published in 1907 as ‘Crosscut’.
She does not ‘languish in her bower’,
Or squander all the golden day
In fashioning a gaudy flower
Upon a worsted spray.
Nor is she quite content to wait
Behind her rose-wreathed lattice pane,
Until beside her father’s gate
The ‘gallant prince draws rein’.
The brave ‘New Woman’ scorns to sigh,
And count it ‘such a grievous thing’
That year and year should hurry by,
And no gay mister bring.
In labor’s ranks she takes her place,
With skilful hand and cultured mind;
Not always foremost in the race,
But never far behind.
And no less lightly fall her feet,
Because they tread the busy ways;
She is no whit less fair or sweet
Than maids of older days,
Who gowned in samite or brocade,
Looked charming in their dainty guise:
But dwelt like violets in the shade,
With shy, half-opened eyes.
Of life she takes a clearer view,
And through the press serenely moves
Unfettered, free, with judgement true,
Avoiding narrow grooves.
She reasons and she understands,
And sometimes ’tis her joy and crown
To lift with strong, yet tender hands,
The burdens men lay down.
Guess I’ll stick to washing dishes,
Sweeping, cooking, darning socks;
Having literary wishes
Gives a girl too many shocks.
I think thoughts just like those bookmen;
Dream sweet dreams from morn to night,
I see folks just like their spook-men
In the evening’s ghostly light.
I’d have loved a life of learning,
But whene’er I go about
Then the kitchen fire goes out
‘Look here, Sis, we’re two great ninnies’ —
Thus my brother yesterday —
‘Working hard when golden guineas
Here are fairly flung away.
‘Prize for lyric, prize for sonnet,
Prize for humorous verses, too —
Seize a paper, scribble on it —
Suit for me and dress for you.
‘Come, let’s try it — I say, Mary,
What’s a lyric, anyhow?’ —
So I got the dictionary,
And forgot to milk the cow.
— ‘Sonnets must be made to order;
Fourteen lines, and put just so,
Like in your embroidery border,
Or a picture-frame, you know.
‘Where’s the ‘Royal Road to Rhyming’?
Lyrics must be musical —
Ebbing, flowing, singing, chiming,
With a gentle rise and fall.’
So we scribbled till the dark it
Closed around, and day was gone;
Mother home again from market!
Dinner wasn’t even on!
Father swore a score of sonnets,
Several miles of lyric, too —
Guess I’ll earn my frocks and bonnets
Just as other daughters do.
I love the Terrace and its way,
Its moments tense with business rife —
The Forum of the city’s life,
Where Commerce holds its kingly sway.
As from the heart, so from it flows
The energies that move the State,
To mould it to a worthy Fate,
That enterprise alone bestows.
I love the Terrace best of all
When crowned with Summer’s vault of blue,
And shafts of gold are falling through
Its lilacs leafy, cool and tall —
When from them drifts a subtle scent
Recalling pleasures of the bush,
And one may quit the city’s rush
For all that recollection meant.
He lies here. See the bush
All grey through grief for him;
Hoar scrub — like ashes cast —
Sprinkles the valley grim.
The saltbush is his shroud,
Wide skies his only pall,
And ‘in memoriam’,
A thousand stamp-heads fall.
Gold-lured to death — and yet
He would have had it so.
Say mass, sing requiem
With the grey bush — and go.
Quietly he has found
Here in the Golden West,
The long-sought-for at last,
An El Dorado blest.
I hear them pass at eventide,
I hear the dead pass by.
Ever the long processions ride,
While sorrow’d night winds sigh.
Bright burns the camp-fire at my feet
White stars burn overhead,
Beyond the flame, in shadows, meet
The roaming, restless dead.
Dead bushmen go, in ghostly guise,
Unseen within the night
Save by the herds with startled eyes,
Stampeding in affright.
All night — all night — waked or asleep
The fall of hoofs I hear;
Softly the phantom horses creep
Past my lone camp — and near.
The champing of a jingling bit
Faintly insistent sounds;
With loosened rein wan stockmen sit
And ride their endless rounds.
Oh, shadow made their fences are,
Grey wraiths the flocks they see;
And Death has neither bound or bar
Except eternity.
Lured by the will-o’-th’-wisp’s pale fire
(Mock lights of hut and home);
Onward by spectral post and wire
Damned souls for ever roam.
Shrill comes a cry across the dark,
And weird — I know it well —
It is the lost who call. And, hark!
The tinkling of a bell.
A heap of whitened bones there lies,
And stands the dead man’s steed;
Though never may the rider rise.
Faithful he waits his need.
And when the winds the storm-clouds bring
And loud the tempest roar.
I hear the drover galloping
To meet his love once more.
Night after night, in wind and rain,
He rides and leaves his flocks,
And night by night he falls again
Over the fatal rocks.
And crashing through by bush and bole
In dread, and dumb, and straight
Goes one, sere-stricken to the soul,
And leaves a murdered mate.
At morn my sweating horses stand
Trembling in wild-eyed fright,
For they have seen the phantom band
That pass’d into the night.
Ever by my lone camp they go,
Nor heed the stars or moon.
I hear them always, and I know
That I shall join them soon.
For surely I shall ride away
To turn some midnight rush,
And, greeting Death, remain for aye —
A spirit of the bush.
Land of Forrests, fleas and flies,
Blighted hopes and blighted eyes,
Art thou hell in earth’s disguise,
Westralia?
Art thou some volcanic blast
By volcanoes spurned, outcast?
Art unfinished — made the last
Westralia?
Wert thou once the chosen land
Where Adam broke God’s one command?
That He in wrath changed thee to sand,
Westralia!
Land of politicians silly,
Home of wind and willy-willy,
Land of blanket, tent and billy,
Westralia.
Home of brokers, bummers, clerks,
Nest of sharpers, mining sharks,
Dried up lakes and desert parks,
Westralia!
Land of humpies, brothels, inns,
Old bag huts and empty tins,
Land of blackest, grievous sins
Westralia.
Published 9 April 1899.
The oilrag is the Labor toff, he holds the miner dirt,
The trucker wouldn’t dare to touch a miner’s dirty shirt;
Then if the mullocker presumes, the trucker gets annoyed,
And all possess a lofty scorn for Boulder unemployed.
Supposing, lads, we sling this pride and try another plan,
And institute a better code, the Brotherhood of Man.
Published 1 January 1905.
The Marble Bar pool is releasing the wind for us,
the Water Snake2 is poised to let the water go.
All the gullies are overflowing,
backing up, bank to bank
because of me — a stranger
— he doesn’t want to recognise me.3
1 In almost all of the songs in this collection, Alexander Brown knew the composers personally, and in many cases he remembers when they were composed, and the situations that prompted them. However, this one is older again. It is not known when this song was composed, but the composer (who would have been a ‘mother’s brother’ for Sandy) died before 1920.
2 Water Snake: Literally, ‘waterhole local-inhabitant’.
3 The implication is that the composer of this song is the cause of all this water, because he is a stranger. If he were a local, the spirit water snake would not have caused the excessive flooding.
Wurlanyalu nganyjarranga jurta murru marri,
jayin ngarnka wirti kanyin yinta ngurraralu.
Karlka-karlka ngapurlarnu ngarningkajarra.
Pampanurra nganunga — kura pirnanyuru
Dear, for an hour with joy bedight,
I thank you in this little lay;
Though well I know some luckier wight,
With you now makes his fond essay;
You were a summer girl as gay
And glad as any Perth could show,
Who shared a bushman’s holiday
By the sea-beach at Cottesloe.
Your sweetness fills the void of night
And down the vistas of the day,
Your beauty comes for my delight,
And the cool stars your eyes portray.
Yes! though from here a weary way,
It is to where the west winds blow
And wanton with the driven spray
By the sea-beach of Cottesloe.
Do you recall the silver-white
Moon-pathway out across the bay,
The flash of Rottnest’s gleaming light,
The sandhills in their dark array,
The sea’s sweet savour, the affray
Of hurrying clouds tossed to and fro,
Changing from ivory to grey,
By the sea-beach of Cottesloe?
Your eyes held dreams that poets write,
Your lips the fragrance of the May,
I sought for fancies recondite
To clothe the love-words I would say,
To tell you, ‘how the Fates betray’,
How loveliest blooms must lose their glow,
How winter follows summer’s sway
By the sea-beach of Cottesloe.
‘The kiss foregone nought can requite,
The rose ungathered must decay,
Too soon youth’s flower must fade from sight,
And Death but chuckles at delay —
So sweetheart, give! while give you may,
None of Love’s guerdons I’ll forego,
In all his pleasances we’ll stray
By the sea-beach at Cottesloe.’
You heard — your eyes, so dark, so bright,
Shone with a still diviner ray,
And soft as falling dews alight,
Your lips, on mine, surrendering lay;
Ah me! your sweet hair’s disarray!
Your warm arms, whiter than the snow!
I knew not were you girl or fay,
By the sea-beach of Cottesloe!
L’Envoi
Dear! though you took me for a jay
It did not cause me any woe,
That rolled-gold watch you filched away,
By the sea-beach at Cottesloe.
A plain wood fence without a trace
Of beauty in its line, or grace,
Becomes mosaic, mysterious-wise,
With gem-like flowers of purple dyes.
On mornings very far away,
I loved a morning-glory spray;
A garden comes my eyes before
With old grey fences purpled o’er.
The texture of our childish dreams
Is woven in with flowers, it seems,
And they remain joys to behold
In later years when we are old.
When morning-glory trims a fence
With purple petals, gaily dense,
My heart makes happy holiday
Because I chanced to pass that way.
Koolinda in Harbour1
Look after Koolinda there, you fellows,
(huge plucky thing,
all its masts and derricks sticking up),
on account of the cyclone.
It’s a plucky thing,
just sheltering there for a while.
He’ll head straight out into the wind,
the launch will lead the ship out
as it heads towards the big sea breeze.
Huge Koolinda!
The skipper will take care of it
out in the deep water.
1 The Koolinda was a steamer plying the Western Australian coast.
Kurlintanya kanyinpiya,
(yulu mungkarra, wirnta pungkurirri),
wanngirrimannyangurarla.
Yulu mingka kayinyu.
Jurta juntu jina man,
para wii marnanyurulurla laanjilu kulpirrikartilu.
Wanakurru Kurlinta!
Kanyin kipangku warlu martaringura.
At Wurruwangkanya1 Jawirimarra is doing
an increase ceremony.
The dust is swirling and eddying,
and his torso is sweating as a result of your
blazing heat.
The ones who increase the heat
are piling on the blankets.
How now? Jawirimarra has got you
Huddled in your windbreaks!
The Heat room totem belongs to them —
Yirrmari, Milkuwarna, Wawiri 2 —
but in the cold season 3 their fire is dead —
Jawiri has blackened it!
1 Wurruwangkanya, in Nyamal country, was the increase site for Cold.
2 Names of three leading men whose totem was Heat, quoted as representatives of all those who had Heat as their totem.
3 Literally, ‘When the Seven Sisters go to rest.’ When they set soon after sundown (April to May), the cold season is approaching.
Wurruwangkanya jipal pirnu Jawirilu.
Kurnturrjartu wunta murli-murli,
ngayiny parrpa ngarringurulu
yinararra murnaju nyurranga.
Pulangkarti jananmani kanyinpiya winu nyukangkurla.
Waayi nyurranya wungku kurnu Jawirimarralu!
Ngayinykapu pananga — Yirrmarimarrarra
Milkuwarnarra pananga Wawirimarrarra —
Kurri-kurringura yarnangkarla pinurrula
panya warru jarnu.
Let me lie in the grass —
Bathe in its verdure
As one bathes in the sea —
Soul-drowned in herbage,
The essence of clover,
Dandelion, camomile, knapweed
And centaury.
Let me lie close to the earth,
Battened against the broad breast
Which brings all things to being
And gives rest to all things.
Let me inspire the odours of birth,
Death, living,
Sweets of the mould,
The generative sap of insects,
Crushed grasses, witch weeds,
Flowering herbs.
For I am an earth child,
An earth lover,
And I ask no more than to be,
Of the earth, earthy,
And to mingle again with the divine dust.
‘Myalup’ refers to a camp set up by the Western Australian Government during the depression to house and provide some ‘employment’ for unemployed workers. This was one of several and it was located at Myalup in vicinity of Harvey, some 100 miles south of Perth. Blackboy Hill was a military training camp during WWI — it was located in the outer suburban area of Perth, in the foothills near Midland Junction, some 15 miles from the city.
They said he was a splendid stamp
Of loyal youth, alert and keen,
When he was training in the camp
At Blackboy Hill in ’17.
They cheered him when he marched away;
Stout patriots rushed to shake his hand;
But he’s at Myalup to-day,
Just one of an unwanted band.
Although he’s drained the bitter cup,
He knows full well that he is still
As good a man at Myalup
As when he marched from Blackboy Hill.
But what a difference between
The patriotic public’s view,
At Blackboy Hill in ’17
And Myalup in ’32.
Jawi in Yindjibarndi
maya galinba ngunu warnda yundu mayalangu
bunggana yardawarninguna birridan manguna
maya galinba ngunu
gurrarngurrarn mirrayangu birridan (manguna)
Yirramagardula ngarri
bawa yardawarninguna
Coming back, rain, he singing:
maya galinba ngunu
gurrarngurrarn yarna malula
birridan manguna
maya galinba ngunu
gurrarngurrarn yarna malula
birridan manguna
warnda yundu mayalangu
gurrarngurrarn yarna malula
*
people are yelling
‘it’s coming back towards the houses’
rainstorm smashing up the trees, the houses over there
rain getting stronger
storm wind making the leaves fly
breaking everything up
mulga parrot is calling out
(that bird belonging to the sea snake)
is bringing the storm winds
the flood is getting stronger, rising higher
Roebourne lying under water
Coming back, rain, he singing:
storm coming back towards the houses
mulga parrot calling it back
storm wind making things fly
breaking everything up
coming back towards the houses
mulga parrot coming back
storm wind making things fly
breaking everything up
storm smashing up the trees, the houses
mulga parrot coming back
Cloudbank, rain, cloudbank,
row upon row of them.
The big upper-layer clouds are rising.
As a result of the host of little clouds
multiplying the country is heating up.
In the constant thunder it talks,
telling us it’s coming.
The downpour is drenching the countryside.
In the open country the raindrops are causing a soft
roaring sound,
as the swathe of the downpour passes.
Lightning is striking at the front,
the storm is causing the dust to swirl around.
Sudden silence! Splashing of falling raindrops.
Karnkulypangu was the cause of this!1
1 Rain was Karnkulypangu’s kalyartu (totem): he was therefore in charge of its increase, and so is considered to be the one responsible for this downpour.
Yirra, kuji, yirra, karti ngayirrmani.
Purntura ngarra maninyu.
Kapalya kurru marnanyurulu
ngurra parlangkarna-parlangkarna kamarnu.
Ngurntika wangka yulayinyu.
Ngurra kunti marnu ngurlungkangulu.
Parlkarranguraya kuji muurrkarra, jinyjirrarangka.
Ngarri para pungarnu,
kurlurlu karti ngampurrjarli marnu ngurntijartulu.
Jamukarra! Warlpa warninyu.
Karnkulypangungu.
The bow wave is rippling,
the long sides of the boat rock slowly from side to side.
Out on the deep water I’m easing the mainsail.
There is the long stretch of curved inlets
and sandy white beaches at Karlkajarranya.
With a beeline we’ll bypass those inlets of Karlkajarranya.
It looks like a different country to me from out on the open sea.
Maybe that really high sand dune is Walal-Mulyanya Point.
We’ll follow the wind, with the bow pointing east,
as the boat heels perfectly to match the change of course.
We cut the spray and turn it to tiny droplets,
the timber of the boat shakes
from the successive pounding of the waves.
He is holding the jibsheet firmly
while the boat is being jerked from side to side.1
The mainsheet rope rattles through the sheaves
of the blocks linked together in series.
The wind strains to pull the boat offcourse,
but I’m holding the rope firmly and confidently,
the long bow rushing over the deep open sea.
1 The boat is now cutting through the waves diagonally, and each wave tries to thrust the bow of the boat a bit to one side.
Yirra wirli-wirli,
kanji mungkarra kanji jaruntarri-jaruntarrimara.
Papa warrungura minjilpa jangku para.
Jurnti ngarurr pirnkurrpa Karlkajarranya
ngurra yumpa mirtarri.
Jurnti ngarurrpa Karlkajarranya jinarralu wanyjanpila.
Ngurra parta ngayinyu ngajapa
wangkurrungura kapungurala.
Ngunyi yila panyja wirtingarra pala
payinta Walal-Mulyanya.
Jurta yanganpila mulya yijungku
ngarlinymarra kanji ngurrpungkalula.
Yilyirri pangka jurrkarnu,
yartingara jananmani-jananmanikapu
warnta yangka-yangkayinyu.
Jiipu jirti ngungku karra marna kanji-kanjinyjangu.
Miin jirtila nyirr marnu purlakangura yirtinykarra.
Wira purrintangurala palkarta yakula palu,
mulya mungkarralula yali wangkurru jurrkarnu.
(Between Broome and Port Hedland)
I saw three crosses in the dunes
Of driftwood, rough and brown,
And one leaned East and one leaned West,
And one had tumbled down.
One had a name cut with a knife,
The other two were bare;
Unless that name were written false,
No lies at all were there —
No virtues posthumously hewed,
Though hitherto ignored;
Stark humble as the Holy Rood
Was each unlettered board;
No promises to meet again,
Nor hints of future bliss —
Yet, as I set them plumb, I thought,
‘There’s not much now amiss!’
Tabi in Jindjiparndi
kandilindili waarrarrii nuurrai meenumarna
warrandala tardu punga tiuarrurrii
Tanginarra jindii manarra jirgirdinba
tina karrii nuurrangaalaa walalana
Right around the wind mark
on the east-side lands the plane, dust blowing.
Tjanginara comes down in the wind with the engine clanging
And the wheels standing on the ground still trembling.
The silence of the islands lay
like peace,
like breath,
on the resurgent sea.
The breath of bandicoots and wrens,
lizards, insects, iridescent fish, tight
in the circuit of their life.
Far as stars,
as unknown stars are we
in the unseen season of their days,
shooting stars of ships
and meteors of men
on land, barren as the moon?
Potential as the sun?
These hot, cool lights shall see
the cataclysmic flash,
the dead night,
the cessation …
and on the fringe
the annihilated form,
the dread resurrection,
the explosive activation of the dwarf
in flesh and fish and fowl.
The silence of the islands lay,
like peace,
like death,
on the resurgent sea.
Three bears are in my room
nesting as tables.
Do bears nest?
Father, mother, child
exactly disciplined
line under line
curve under curve
As Victorian head
keeps mother in her place
who sees the child
is quite unseen
below.
My guests are their release
The child comes first
spaced to hold an ashtray
with innocent sophistication
Mother as mothers do
serves as table to a pair
August Father with conventional hypocrisy
needs must accept
glasses, divers savoury dishes
which undoubtedly he covets
With guests’ departure goes
the liberty of hospitality.
Tidy hands remove the ashtrays
glasses, empty plates
DISCIPLINE’S MAINTAINED
Each is fitted close
child under mother
under Pa’s
implacable protection
to bear their situation
as they should
a neat space-saving unit
Immobilised in the midst of affairs,
Unable to move forward or backward,
Stranded from doing,
I visited the Aquarium.
The axolotl lay, expanding in a shrinking world,
Doomed to outgrow his tepid mud.
Carp gaped beneath two-sided sea,
Mouthed air and glass, testing reality
In the above and the beyond,
Nibbling the silvery roof of watery existence,
Butting soft-nosed the barrier of death.
My mind struggled to the surface,
My thought swam to the dim reflection,
And slowly sank, the lazily moving body
Seeking the warm caresses of an artificial tide.
My river very seldom flows,
It slumbers till the seasons change;
It is not fed by melting snows,
It rises in the barren range.
High on its bank where flood gums grow,
Where native creepers climb and twine,
I built my house long years ago,
When first I fenced this run of mine.
Beneath the clear Nor’-Western skies —
Below the trees that clothe its brink,
A crystal pool of water lies,
And here the wild bush creatures drink.
Here countless birds hold revelry,
And day by day through all the year,
Each passing cloud, each shrub and tree,
Is mirrored on its surface clear.
But when the long dry seasons change,
My river rises in its might,
To sweep sea-seeking from the range,
To swirl foam-crested through the night.
And then once more the streams run low,
And again a chain of pools it lies,
And had I power to make it flow,
I would not have it otherwise.
Oh sad, bewildered world: you have the reaping
Of that which you have sown throughout the years
And you have garnered all your hellish harvest
Of blood and tears.
There shall be spring clad days of dream contentment,
And halcyon nights that merge with hopeful dawn;
And there will come the solace of sad memories,
To those who mourn.
But you, and you, who gave yourselves to slaughter,
What matters it that other days be fair;
That ships of State, star-guided, find a haven?
The dead don’t care.
The red Nor-Western breakaways,
So rugged and so grand:
Those mighty hills of other days,
That overlooked the land:
But now are crumbled to decay,
All strewn across the plain;
And who can build a breakaway
Into a hill again?
I’ve gazed upon the breakaways
When first the orb of light,
In golden splendour, sends its rays,
To crown each crumbled height:
And from them watched the amber sky
To deeper ember change,
When evening breezes softly sigh
Across the rugged range.
I love the lonely breakaways,
Where ne’er a song bird sings,
Because their ruined grandeur sways
My mind to greater things.
And ever in this world of strife,
Like men they seem to me:
For who can build a broken life
To what it used to be?
marayunu nyinda
marayunu ‘thula-gunjimuna’
marayunu nyinda
marayunnu ‘thula-gunjimuna’
marayunu nyinda
marayunu ‘thula-gunjimuna’
marayunu nyinda
marayunu ‘thula-gunjimuna’
marayunu nyinda
marayunu ‘thula-gunjimuna’
marayunu nyinda
marayunu ‘thula-gunjimuna’
thulhu warnda warnda wandurala
thulhu warnda nawuna
thulhu warnda warnda wandurala
thulhu warnda nawuna
thulhu warnda warnda wandurala
marayunu nyinda birringula warnina
marayunu nyinda birringula warnina
marayunu nyinda birringula warnina
marayunu nyinda
marayunu ‘thula-gunjimuna’ banganana garri wirndurana
marayunu nyinda
marayunu ‘thula-gunjimuna’ banganana garri wirndurana
marayunu nyinda
marayunu ‘thula-gunjimuna’
marayunu nyinda
marayunu ‘thula-gunjimuna’
*
you poor man
poor man on your own
like a single tree bent over
fossicking through the scrub
trees everywhere!
fossicking all by himself
poor man, alone
you poor man
not knowing which way to go
standing in one place
Jawi in Yindjibarndi. ‘I made a song about old people looking for them gold out in alluvial country.’
Boojera! boojera! naang injal?
Boojera kwala naang?
Nganya dwongga burt, naang-i-murnongul
Marriba yukain kooroo weeri weeriba.
My country! my country! Where is it?
What name this country? I know it not.
I look for my country and cannot find it.
I am moving and standing here, but far away is my country.
From songs of the Bibbulmun as translated and recorded by Daisy Bates.
Let’s all wait anxiously. (What else can we do?)
What’s happening? Is the doctor coming?
It’s time for him.
‘Get in a line!’ He stabbed the arm, it’s numb.
‘Fold up your arm!2 Off you go!’
1 At the Lock Hospital.
2 To hold the cotton swab in place until the spot stopped bleeding.
Miru-miru nyinila. Wanyja?
Waayi milpayan maparnkarra?
Nyayi parnunga tayimu.
‘Layinapu yirra nyiniya!’
Jirli yajirnu, jaamanyjakarra.
‘Jirlikurnu! Yarra!’
Fourteen white-fronted shags
like bits of Chinese ideograms
are perched on a jagged lump of limestone rock
above me as I turn the seaweed over for shells
brushing the flies away
and the sand-hoppers.
I like the way they accept the fact
I’m about some business of my own
that neither concerns them nor threatens.
We live as live-and-let-live things.
I gather shells.
They dry their wings.
There are about fifty of them
on the stony ground,
some standing still,
some moving about.
Nothing much of pink
breast or lighter-hued crest
shows in the twilight
among the stones.
They are standing about
like little grey-coated aldermen
talking in undertones.
If you were
to draw
lightly
a straight line
right
down
the margin
of this
sheet of
paper
it wouldn’t be
as thin
as a
Razor Fish
seen
edge
ways
on.
If you were
to cut
the shape
of a
fish
out of transparent
cellophane
with a
tiny
tail fin
and a mouth,
as long
and sharp
as
a
pin
and let it drift
tail up
head down
you wouldn’t see —
the Razor Fish
See
what
I
mean?
Withdrawing from the amorous grasses
from the warm and luscious water
the snake is soul untouched by both
nor does the fire of day through which it passes
mark it or cling. Immaculate navigator
it carries death within its mouth.
Soul is the snake that moves at will
through all the nets of circumstance
like the wind that nothing stops
immortal movement in a world held still
by rigid anchors of intent or chance
and ropes of fear and stays of hopes.
It is the source of all dispassion
the voiceless life above communion
secret as the spring of wind
nor does it know the shames of self-confession
the weakness that enjoys love’s coarse dominion
or the betrayals of the mind.
Soul is the snake the cool viator
sprung from a shadow on the grass
quick and intractable as breath
gone as it came like the everlasting water
reflecting god in immeasurable space —
and in its mouth it carries death.
For Douglas Stewart
There was a drop of scarlet, bright
in the limbs of the dead tree:
a scorching colour aloft in light
where only night should be.
For I had come from the sleeping tent
in the very dusk of morning,
and trod in the frost’s filament
steps that might help adorning
that day’s subsequent sunrise
of light as stern as gold:
and there I saw the robin’s eyes
and his breast red in the cold.
His eyes were brown as the creek bed
where the earthy water ran,
and ah, dear friend! his breast was red
as the breast of a killed man.
But he was lively, he was gay
as a thumb’s marionette.
He was as red as a flower, or day
that had not flowered yet.
I stood in the white felt of frost
blurred where my feet had been,
and he it was I loved the most
in all I yet had seen
of bitter light and bitter cold
and darkened firing wood.
The fire lit where the wood was old
was where the robin stood
a flame, a flame so red and dear,
so little and so bright
that once again the dawn was here
and the assured light.
No glistening cowpat, after all, but the first, worst
snake of the season, dissatisfied with the sun
of October, though the branches began to burst
a month ago, and the fruit has set too soon
this dry and wind-wrung spring.
Apart from the thread of cattle-track, in a whorl curled
outward from its hard and angry little head
it lay shining deceptively at the world
that stepped aside with quick and careful heed
for the shy, savage thing.
Winter melted slowly from the delicate frail scales
that sheathed its devil where it lay so sleek and still
forming a deathly purpose that seldom fails:
for it has all the rapier-speed and steel
of death for a heritage,
and today (I thought) or tomorrow, in the bright light
with shining topaz eye and wide mouth extended
it will move; or in the quiet hours of night,
perhaps, it will move and kill and with the deed
quench its herpetic rage
and winter’s fast in one; each will smother the other
in very repletion, and no more manifest
this cold malice: it will have become blood-brother
to warm life by virtue of that feast
swallowed alive and whole …
But now it waited until I had looked, gone on
and returned: it was there still on the starved grass,
deadly, lovely, painfully absorbing the sun
into its smooth self-seeking coils of grace,
into its dark soul.
The afternoon
crowding upon the windows with much cheerfulness
of blue and slanting gold
will end too soon.
Judith has sewn the collar on a dress
that’s excellent though old,
and, with the needle in her idle fingers,
sits and stares,
and out beyond the windows sunlight lingers
softly on a wall of ancient brick, old-red,
and lights the leafless almond-tree with gold.
This might go on for ever.
I might watch her watching the afternoon,
idle and thoughtless; and we both might never
feel the day’s death, the chill of evening,
the blue of dusk, and the rising of the moon.
But I will move, and she will turn to me,
and somewhere, suddenly, a bird will sing
and it will end too soon.
Yellow, honey-smooth, pollen sifted,
hail-fellow-well-met yellow;
audacious campaigner, capeweed unloosing
butterfly armies on fallow.
Knee-deep in yellow, the earth shouting,
yellow is not the colour of fear,
yellow is a loquat in the teeth of the sun,
yellow the day’s birth and her bier.
A colour deeper than its sum of self
it cannot hide its burning eye
or tell the topaz to withdraw its fire,
the saffron cup withhold its dye.
Yellow is no coward colour, only lit
on candle flame upon the dead —
let my bitter boy put off his khaki,
eat with me my golden-freckled bread.
* After ‘birthday ballot’ of 18-year-olds for war.
We have listened,
too ready to praise her prattle
as the breakthrough of words,
too ready to catch her at last rekindling
the knowing light of our voices
and those of astonished strangers.
Of words indeed is the beginning.
Words are the greatest of all our gifts.
At this moment she sits
in her full scale world of our home’s small garden,
and seeing her jilt without warning
her playthings onto the lawn,
I follow the rush of her eyes
to the wattle bird
as it grips the hibiscus flower,
bending about like a yachtsman playing a sail,
or perhaps to the caterpillar
piling then laying its wildcat fur
up a leaf‘s sheer slide, or to the cabbage moth
blowing about like a star of cloth.
There are no words
to span the spell I see in her eyes.
Speechless with wonder
before she has learned to speak,
her lips are parted petals themselves
with no more sound
than the crimson trumpet the bird has found.
And I wish her many like moments of magic
when, however her life becomes patterned
with words, their grace and their garbage,
this look is her only answer
and she cannot speak.
He runs ahead, hedged in by spinifex,
snared by its height he is too young to clear,
dribbling his strength out on the track
where our wheels snarl and worry at his heels.
Vermin is said, and we could ponder this
around a campfire, but here our chase has heart
in our horizon’s values
to brake back from him should our tyres once touch.
so fragile and so madly straight, the track
we clutch as our life’s thread
he runs on as a thread of death,
looking for some quick gap in the green mesh,
a mouth, a tongue of sand, to lick him off.
And there it is at last, and he skids through,
spinning around to stand and stare
as if he knows we dare not follow.
we slow down, watching, noting how suddenly
the morning shimmers with our voices
and how we breathe a little easier
as so does he.
Now that their fright has melted,
his eyes slant with a question,
a wry scan that tries to niche us in his scheme of wildlife,
the world he knows and which we do not share.
Our tyres move on, he bristles at the sound,
slips past some smaller clumps of spinifex
and goes from us, low-shouldered, at a trot.
These rocks placed here by man
to form a bridgewater
The sea’s age typified
by algae clinging to the stone
The Indian Ocean limitless
breathing might and power
even on this day of calm
I look across at Rottnest
in the far off haze
where my people
breathed their last sigh
for home the mainland
to them the distant blue
What did they do
but stand within the paths
of cloven hooves
Their only crime
to fight for what was rightly theirs
To them the island was a place of souls
departed down through
eons of time but by a savage twist of fate
No flight of soul for them
But chained they waited
for their lot’s conclusion
to be forever part of
the island of the dead
You have stood there for centuries
arms gaunt reaching for the sky
your roots in cadence
with the heart beat of the soil
High on the hill, you missed
the faller’s ace and saw
But they destroyed the others
down the slope
and on the valley floor
Now you and I
bleed in sorrow and in silence
for what once had been
while the rapists still
stride across
and desecrate the land
Little robin quite still
inoffensive almost pensive
free of heart and will
But you have your enemies so take care and I can tell
you also have to keep an eye
upon the ground as well
Now chooditj that’s the native cat
has a diet of meat
and tiny fledglings
are to him a treat
Now butcher bird with cruel beak
and butcher is his name
him and chooditj are alike
they have a diet the same
So hide your home my little one
where prickle bushes grow
and you can keep a watch above
and I’ll watch from below
The Government is my shepherd,
I shall not want.
They let me search in the Aboriginal reserves
which leads me to many riches
for taxation sake.
Though I wallow in the valley of wealth I will fear no weevil
because my money is safe in the bank
vaults of the land,
and my Government will always comfort me.
They will always protect me,
from the Aborigines there and claims there.
So I can then take wealth whenever I have a need to
and my bank account will grow even more.
Oh! Surely wealth and materialism will shorten the
days of my life, but I will dwell safely protected
by Government for ever.
John Pat was a 16-year-old Aboriginal boy who died of head injuries alleged to have been caused in a disturbance between police and Aborigines in Roebourne, WA, in 1983. Four police were charged with manslaughter over the incident. They were acquitted.
Write of life
the pious said
forget the past
the past is dead.
But all I see
in front of me
is a concrete floor
a cell door
and John Pat.
Agh! tear out the page
forget his age
thin skull they cried
that’s why he died!
But I can’t forget
the silhouette
of a concrete floor
a cell door
and John Pat.
The end product
of Guddia law
is a viaduct
for fang and claw,
and a place to dwell
like Roebourne’s hell
of a concrete floor
a cell door
and John Pat.
there in their minds now
deep within,
there to prance
a sidelong glance
a silly grin
to remind them all
of a Guddia wall
a concrete floor
a cell door
and John Pat.
Guddia: Kimberley term for white man
Where are my first-born, said the brown land, sighing;
They came out of my womb long, long ago.
They were formed of my dust — why, why are they crying
And the light of their being barely aglow?
I strain my ears for the sound of their laughter.
Where are the laws and the legends I gave?
Tell me what happened, you whom I bore after.
Now only their spirits dwell in the caves.
You are silent, you cringe from replying.
A question is there, like a blow on the face.
The answer is there when I look at the dying,
At the death and neglect of my dark proud race.
House, you are done …
And now before
The high contracting parties take
Final possession, let us stand
Silent for this occasion at the door,
Who here a lifelong compact make:
That you were not for trading planned,
Since barter wears the object poor,
But are henceforth our living stake
— And hereunto we set our hand.
Be over us, be strong, be sure.
You may not keep from world alarms,
But from the daily wind and rain
Of guessed, or real, or of imagined wrong
Shadow us between your arms;
Be our sincere affection, and maintain
A corner here for art and song;
Yet no mere image of benumbing calms,
But a bold premiss, where the mind may gain
Purchase for adventurous journeys long.
Be round us, and protect from harms.
A roof well timbered, hollow walls
Where the damp creep never comes,
Kiln-hardened joists no worm can bore;
Low sills where early daylight falls
Beneath wide eaves against the summer suns;
Huge cupboards, where a child might store
Surfeit of treasures; and no cramping halls,
But spacious and proportioned rooms;
A single, poured foundation, perfect to the core.
Be our security against all calls.
Six orange trees, a lemon, and a passion vine.
All the lush living that endears
A home be yours: some asters for a show,
And roses by the wall to climb,
Hydrangeas fat as cauliflowers.
We who (how arduously!) have watched you grow,
We feel you in the very soil; and time
Shall tie your flesh with ours, your piers
And pipes intestinal, that anchor you below.
Be through us, and prevent our fears.
Your windows face the north: the sun
At four o’clock leaps in;
By breakfast-time has swung so high
We lose him; till upon his downward run,
Swollen and yellow as a mandarin,
We catch his amber from the western sky.
Then when the night’s dark web is spun,
Let your glass like a stationary comet gleam,
And lantern to our light supply.
Be our sure welcome, and a wakeful beam.
Though we designed and built you, we
Will not outlive what we have done.
And if our children here succeed,
Our gain is now, and yours. Let this mortar be
Consecrate to death — a place where one
Gladly might wither to his glowing seed.
We serve you then in all humility
Who serve us, and by our sweat were won
When we had most need.
Give us the obligations that make free.
House, you are done … And nevermore
So painted, new, so arrogantly clean;
The tang of lime, the horrid clang
Of footsteps on the naked floor
Will fade to a serene
Patina of sounds and smells that hang
Like the reverberations of a shore
Of history: a hive where love has been,
And whence the future sprang.
Be powerful above us all. Be sure.
Listen!
Listen!
Do you hear?
The whispering columns of the sap … the ear
To the great bole; that giant pulse, that heart so near.
You hear —
You hear?
It is your own heart’s thunder that you hear …
But there can be no danger in these trees;
No beast lurks, and no dark shadows freeze
The liquid patterns of the forking sun.
The leaves, and the light — all things run
Into a concord — the silence and the stir;
Commingle. A murmur in the wood
Of maternal flesh and blood.
Like motes in the stilled air,
The spark of birdsong — here, now there —
Wagtail and wren together,
Twig-fall and whirr of feather,
With knock of mallet and the drop of axe
Where moving loggers snig their stacks
Like a fist of matches by the rail,
And the saw’s torn, spasmodic wail.
The earth receives
The waste, the leavings and the leaves.
O ecstasy of birth that could devise
From a scale’s horn that intricate light plume!
Could twist this stuff of root and bark and bloom
To columns of the running sap, and rear their spires
Against the sullen, catabolic fires.
The leaves breathe, the sap runs —
Burn still the unapproachable suns;
Still falling, rising, falling, felled,
Silently the gaps are filled,
As a pool after rain with its own colour fills
In these song-thronged pale echoing parallels.
Walking in the moonlit night
I shot a flying fox
for their experience
and the eldest said,
‘and now can you bring it back to life?’
and I have not shot since.
The many times that I have killed
the small soft thing that flew or ran
was my insurance that I could face
death as easily as I gave.
But giving life is another thing.
eventually through meditation
you have flashed across my line of sight
telephone lines make no connection
once in a while on cool afternoons sun low
shadows grown long you have gone
into distance and darkness not a speck on the horizon
leaving a soft word that tore its way into the brain
that searches the line for hours tonight
being able to conjure a name to reach
across the distance of permanence
‘Swift’ is the name I have found for you
Swift wings in flight
You will never delight
The boy in my being
Swift wings by returning
Swift to my sky line
I do know you have gone.
11
A lifetime away crystal clear the faintest tingle near enough to decipher its whereabouts
Condamine bells ring in my ears these eighty years of one lifetime remembering
I will go back I will wind water from the deepest well I will listen to the tinkle of water falling
Hear the bells as milkers rise in the mornings feeding towards the yard
Dropping yesterday’s mulch to reinvigorate the grass coming up through the earth
Bringing in the milk of life completing the endless circle of living existence
I will hear the sighing as she leaves me
I will know she is no longer with me
16
Yet the voice of poetry sweet and clear as the bells the birdsong the crickets the loneliness
The wildflowers springing seasonally all over again following drought and rain
Myriads of bird and wildlife shrieking hysterically with delight
Her voice soft and clear telling me in whispers of our love saying regretfully
it’s time to go it’s time
to leave this life
I’m going now.
In the burnt-out trunk
in the karri forest
myself my little sister
hand in hand
one dark one fair
one bonneted one
with a nimbus
of platinum hair
like lost children
out of a gothic tale
behind us his Akubra —
hatted head
sprouting the unseen antlers
my father the wood demon
deep in shadow
growing out of a tree
snapped up by a box Brownie
the 60 year old negative
exposed into the present
like a parable
dark child
subdued and powerful
the blonde
in her white dress
blazing into the light
disturbed uncertain
transitory
as a cabbage moth
alighting for an instant
in the forest
those judging figures
orchestrate the scene
rising up out of the litter
on the forest floor
implacable as horned owls
from the heart’s darkness
what lies behind that door
what troubled lives
what beckoning secret
hidden from the white-frocked child
the giant tree fallen down
the father dead
the children grown
the tragic rotting order overthrown.
In Midland still the trains go by,
The black smoke thunders on the sky,
Still in the grass the lovers lie.
And cheek on cheek and sigh on sigh
They dream and weep as you and I,
In Midland where the trains go by.
Across the bridge, across the town,
The workers hurry up and down.
The pub still stands, the publican
Is still a gross, corrupted man.
And bottles clinking in the park
Make symphonies of summer dark.
Across the bridge the stars go down,
Our two ghosts meet across the town.
Who dared so much must surely creep
Between young lovers’ lips, asleep,
Who dared so much must surely live
In train-smoke off the Midland bridge.
In Midland, in the railway yards,
They shuffle time like packs of cards
And kings and queens and jacks go down,
But we come up to Midland town.
O factory girls in cotton slips
And men with grease across your lips,
Let kings and queens and jacks go down,
But we’ll still kiss in Midland town.
An oath, a whisper and a laugh,
Will make our better epitaph.
We’ll share a noggin in the park
And whistle songs against the dark.
There is no death that we can die
In Midland where the trains go by.
Once I rode with Clancy through the wet hills of Wickepin,
By Kunjin and Corrigin with moonlight on the roofs,
And the iron shone faint and ghostly on the lonely moonlit siding
And the salt earth rang like crystal underneath our flying hoofs.
O once I rode with Clancy when my white flesh was tender,
And my hair a golden cloud along the wind,
Among the hills of Wickepin, the dry salt plains of Corrigin,
Where all my Quaker forebears strove and sinned.
Their black hats went bobbing through the Kunjin churchyard,
With great rapacious noses, sombre-eyed,
Ringbacked gums and planted pine trees, built a raw church
In a clearing, made it consecrated ground because they died.
From this seed I spring — the dour and sardonic Quaker men,
The women with hooked noses, baking bread,
Breeding, hymning, sowing, fencing off the stony earth,
That salts their bones for thanksgiving when they’re dead.
It’s a country full of old men, with thumbscrews on their hunger,
Their crosses leaning sideways in the scrub.
My cousins spit to windward, great noses blue with moonlight,
Their shoulders propping up the Kunjin pub.
O once I rode with Clancy through the wet hills of Wickepin,
By Kunjin and Corrigin with moonlight on the roofs,
And the iron shone faint and ghostly on the lonely, moonlit siding
And the salt earth rang like crystal underneath our flying hoofs.
And the old men rose muttering and cursed us from the graveyard
When they saw our wild white hoofs go flashing by,
For I ride with landless Clancy and their prayers are at my back,
They can shout out strings of curses on the sky.
By Wickepin, by Corrigin, by Kunjin’s flinty hills,
On wild white hoofs that kindle into flame,
The river is my mirror, the wattle tree our roof,
Adrift across our bed like golden rain.
Let the old men clack and mutter, let their dead eyes run with rain.
I hear the crack of doom across the scrub.
For though I ride with Clancy there is much of me remains,
In that moonlit dust outside the Kunjin pub.
My golden hair has faded, my tender flesh is dark,
My voice has learned a wet and windy sigh
And I lean above the creek bed, catch my breath upon a ghost,
With a great rapacious nose and sombre eye.
O to live dangerously again,
meeting clandestinely in Moore Park,
the underground funds tucked up between our bras,
the baby’s pram stuffed with illegal lit.
We hung head down for slogans on the Bridge,
the flatbed in the shed ran ink at midnight.
Parked in the driveway, elaborately smoking,
the telltale cars, the cameras, shorthand writers.
Plans for TAKING OVER … 3 YRS THE REVOLUTION.
The counter revs. out gunning for the cadres.
ESCAPE along the sea shelf, wading through
warm waters soft with Blood.
WOW! WHAT A STORY! … guerilla fighters
wear cardigans and watch it on The Box,
lapsed Party cards, and Labor’s in again.
Retired, Comrade X fishes Nambucca Heads,
& Mrs Petrov, shorthand typist
hiding from reporters
brings home the weekly bacon.
But O O O to live
so dangerously again,
their Stamina trousers pulling at the crutch.
It was hot dry country
so we had picnics by the lake
running races on Boxing Day
from the tennis courts we could hear
the thud of tennis balls
the mixed doubles calling out one love
diving from the springboard
into the clear lethal water
picking the leeches off our legs and arms
through our stinging eyes
the trees stood upright
flocks of wild duck flew overhead
crying in a cacophony of mourning
the horizon wavered dropped into the glittering lake
from the bank we could hear
the merry go round turning
turning faintly in the breathless air
playing a fairground tune
that was like a warning
but we took no notice.
I’m a stranger to this country,
so I’m tracking along with these others.
I like this area, with its many beautiful1 gullies.
Extensive rocky hilly country —
I’m feeling a bit lost in this country.
Lots of cadjebut canopies2
in line at Marlanyjinya waterhole.
1 The word is used of highly decoarated dancers in a corroboree.
2 They are beyond a rise, so he can’t see the bases of the trees yet.
Pampanulu jina marna ngurra panalala.
Karlka-karlka mirnilypurru
yururtu ngalanya ngayiny kanyilkunti.
ngayinyja ngurra wara-wara.
Jalkukurru pukarnkarri warnta
jilukarra Marlanyjinya yinta.
Darting here and there,1 eager to get going.
‘Let’s tie the load tightly on the buckboard!’2
‘When will we be on the move?
After sunset?’
‘After supper we’ll move, nonstop in the moonlight.’
He’s really speeding across the
plains country to Kurrkara.3
The engine is rough, not too good,
not running smoothly yet.
He really let it go down the steep slope,
with no fear of the bridge.
The wheels make a different sort of noise
on the stony patches.
In the dazzling beam the V-8 is running
really fast now,
speeding southwards through the darkness
towards the open country.
Concentrating in the sandy country,
skimming along past Yamarlingurrpa.
Let the tyres hum.4
are bouncing back the engine’s booming roar.
Steam, radiator!
At Yartujangu he is standing for a while.
In the pool of light heading south at Yirrka-Pukara
the vehicle is speeding fast.
At Nganta-Nganta the engine’s exhaust
is throbbing perfectly.
1 Yintiri wakarnirnu means ‘going here, there and everywhere’. The driver, Billy Hill, manager of De Grey Station, is constantly changing direction as he goes to various buildings (store, stables, windmill room, etc.) on the station, collecting all the things he has to take out to the outstation.
2 Warnta karlu-karlu (literally ‘timber lightweight’) refers to the buckboard, which in those days had timber tray and sides.
3 Kurrkara was the name of the place where the old Broome Highway crossed the De Grey River on a bridge, about a mile south of the De Grey homestead.
4 The word for this noise is difficult to translate briefly into English. It refers to the soft continuous crunching sound of the tyres compressing the grains of sand together as they roll over them.
Yintiri wakarnirnu, ngayinyju marrapalu.
‘Warnta karlu-karlu palarr kajunjarra
luwutu warnikatangka!’
‘Ngananyakarra nganil ngarri nganyjarra?
Mapalyanyangka?’
‘Japajarra nganil jinarra wirlarrakarti.’
parlkarrakarrangura Kurrkanrakarni.
Nguya-nguya, ngungku pakurta,
yinjinpa pirlurruyanya.
Yinyal murru marnu yirri kanimparra,
kurntarriyanya purijirra para,
partangka nyaarr marnu yilku murrulungura.
Jintararrangka Piyayiti jawarrany murtipa jajukarra,
jungkurl pirnu karti wurruru ngurrarra
marliny karturra.
Yintin marramarralu kayinyu ngurra yumpa-yumparra,
Yamarlingurrpamalu jinanyku,
taya nyangkaly manmara.
Jurnti ngarrparnilu ngurntirri pumarr punganmara
Yarnajangulu. Ritiyayita yukuntarri!
Yartujangumalu jampa wurtarri.
Mirnarrangura karti wurruru Yirrka-Pukarangura
pirrjarta jangkarri jungkurl pirnu.
Nganta-Ngantangura yinjinpa karta
nyangkarr manmara.
The welder has been started up,
it’s stationary.
He will put holes in these iron rails1
with the welder.
While being held firmly in your hand
it makes streams of sparks.
The welder noise roars
as the holes are made in the steel.
The lengths of iron have been left
standing up in a straight line.
The wooden railings are complete,
joined up in their rows by Clancy McKenna.2
1 A stockyard is under construction, with upright lengths of old railway line for posts and local timber for rails (probably cut from coolabah trees).
2 The posts have now been put up in position, and the wooden railings fastened to them. The stockyard is completed.
Wiyilta ngurntirri jipantangu
nguntutu karriyan.
Nyalila pananya riyil-riyil yayin
pirli jan wiyiltakartangku.
Marangka palarr karra mantangura
nyintapa jirntakurru marnu.
Wiyilta ngurntirri pumarr karriyan
marntarra pirli jarnanyuru.
Layin junturarrangka yayin wanyjantangu.
Warnta pukarrmaru, yirtinykarra
wanyjantangu Wamiyingungu.
Our poor trees from Pukapannya1
are almost fully submerged!
Flowing steadily, let it rise,2
this raging flood.
1 Pukapannya is a small island covered with dense trees, near the bank of the De Grey River just below where the De Grey homestead stands. Kurrunya Pool is just downstream from it.
2 The permissive suffix –mara often expresses an attitude of resignation; here it’s not that the composer wants the flood to keep on rising, but that there is no way he can stop it.
Warntaparri nguru-nguruya nganyjarranga
Pukapannyakapu!
Piparu, ngarramanimara, kurlurrumarnunya
Except that it is happening to us,
the 105 reads like a death toll in
Paraguay.
Up in the newspaper offices, the girls
are taking paper and files in and out
of the air-conditioned rooms, chiming
softly, their blouses and brown legs
as cool as dolphins.
The cadets and copy boys stand around
the water-cooler playing noughts and
crosses on the frosted glass.
In his office, the sub-editor is slashing
with his red pencil. He reads the heading —
fresh violence and thinks of the salad he
had for lunch.
Out along the river the bandy trees
are perfectly still, canonizing someone
we don’t know.
The glassy water curves like a bottle,
stabbing out frazzled splinters of light.
Between two elms, a young man is attempting
to eat his girl.
The gulls are standing under the sprinklers,
geometrically spaced, patient.
Which the detectives up at the city lock-up are not.
The prisoner keeps giving them the same answers.
One of them sends out for cokes, leaving the
prisoner out of the order.
But still he won’t change his story.
‘Now come on,’ the detective sergeant asks.
‘What did you do with it?’
‘Do with what?’ the prisoner sneers, and wipes
the sweat from the top of his lying mouth.
Down at the beach the sun sits out over
the reef like the Fat Lady at last November’s Royal Show.
A wisp of a breeze searches for a shell to hide in.
Under the shadehouses the families crouch like refugees.
A girl, tanned better than leather and wearing
a white bathing suit, comes out of the water.
The sand snaps at her bare feet.
Up the coast, a pall of smoke climbs into the
bleached blue of the sky and tries to make
itself into the shape of a dragon.
Over at the zoo the tropical fish don’t care,
spell coded messages to each other with their tails.
With the birds, it is different.
They are suffering even though their keeper
spends all his time going from cage to cage
spraying them with a hose.
The parrots hang upside down and let the water
trickle into their feathers while the small
birds flutter through the showers of silver
drops and make beep noises.
Those visitors who go beyond the bird cages
to gloat at the bears, the bored cats and the
panting monkeys are sadists and deserve
their own special hell.
At five the rush starts.
The glasses of beer move like convoys.
The cricket scores take second billing to
the thermometer up at the Weather Bureau.
The sun still has a sting.
All the train windows are down and the cars
are melting into their shadows.
The sun is reluctant to call it a day.
While waiting for it to hiss into the sea,
people, at home, sit on their front verandahs
and complain.
After the sun finally sets, its stain is hard
to eradicate.
Cars fall down the drives and burp off towards the beaches.
Sports cars swim along the esplanades like sharks,
blurting obscenities from their exhausts.
The sea bulges.
The whisking waves rattle conquests of shells.
Lovers come out later when the stars are clever.
Fishermen cast their rods and stand like sculpture.
Cigarettes peck the gloom.
Voices are like fairy floss.
The night tells its name and is loved like
a lost child.
Their hides stretched tight
particularly over their hollow faces
where the shallow clefts of muscle broke
out jigsaws, and their arms going stiff
with fright, their bodies hanging back on
their locked knees, they pitched unwillingly
into each other’s knotted fear.
Around them the blabbing voices stopped
as their tension leapt out like electricity
from hand, jaw and mouth. And crookedly and
ugly their fists fell out of their shivering
sleeves, the blows skidding over the soft,
welcoming flesh, their breaths sucking and their
eyes glazed — bearing no witness.
We caught them up and almost reluctantly
dragged them apart, noting that the struggle
they gave us was only a token gesture as they
were both thankful for our interference. When
they took up their glasses once more, their
hands shook so violently that they had to put
them down.
It was a blind corner,
I remember, I couldn’t think
to brake somehow, still less in time,
that moment round the bend —
a shock of water, overwhelming sea
where should have been a road,
a bridge over the river,
I mean even in flood.
car engine dumb as cork,
I must have passed out
as under ether, I guess,
head just above water,
body vague as sponge,
below the knees, adrift
as slush, at one with.
On terra firma Australis —
don’t ask me how I got out, Eddy,
and Bruce, this isn’t a suicide note,
Heaven forbid!
No sailing to Byzantium either,
thankful just to have survived —
around an edge of consciousness,
new faces, fellow Australian.
And voices, a country woman asking:
‘Where y’ from?’
Her husband stands up tall
by their four-wheel drive,
looks me up and down:
‘Jesus! What on earth!’
And so, uncertain, ‘Perth,’
I said, from down under.
‘I mean before that.’
‘Oh! Malaysia.
(O, Malaysia).’
‘And you like it here?’
‘For sure. It’s all right, really;
the family, too. They’re safe, ahead,
I think — we travel separately’ —
beyond the sometime river
into the future.
The city has no centre, focal landmark,
no Place de la Concorde, Padang Merdeka, Tien An Men,
no particular square, terrace, public park.
On important days citizens do not converge,
as elsewhere, for a common purpose — they feel
no urge to (there’s no compulsion);
would rather windsurf, sprawl on a beach, go bush,
or some place else, even overseas (if it’s
not too far, not too expensive).
Alternatively, might as well stay home,
weed, mow the lawn, try a new recipe, barbecue,
lounge, have a beer, watch tv (Love you Perth).
Of course. Or else. Yet sometimes,
for a while, I’d rather be away
from family, neighbours, visiting friends;
be all alone, to daydream, diverge, de-centred.
But no looking back to brood, and not too far ahead,
just the opposite foreshore, Bassendean.
And the Swan, quiet, deathly pale at evening.
For my Father born 1903, died at sea, 1967
Lord of the divided, heal!
Father, old ocean’s skull making storm calm and the waves to sleep,
Visits his first-born, humming in dreams, hiding the pearls that were
Behind Argus, defunct Melbourne rag. The wireless shouts declarations of
War. ‘Father,’ says the first-born first time around (and nine years dead),
Weeping incurable for all his hidden skills. His country’s Medical Journal
Laid him out amid Sigmoid Volvulus, Light on Gastric Problems, Health Services
For Young Children Yesterday Today and Tomorrow which is now and now and now and
Never spoke his name which is Father a war having happened between her birth, his
Death: Yisborach, v’yistabach, v’yispoar, v’yisroman, v’yisnaseh — Hitler is
Dead. The Japanese are different. Let us talk of now. The war is ended.
Strangers found you first. Bearing love back, your first-born bears their praise
Into the sun-filled room, hospitals you tended, city roofs and yards, ethereal rumours.
Gray’s Inn Road, Golden Square, St George’s, Birmingham, Vienna’s General, the
Ancient Alfred in Commercial Road where, tearing paper in controlled strips, your
First-born waited restless and autistic, shredding life, lives, ours. ‘Have to
See a patient. Wait for me,’ healing knife ready as the first-born, girt to kill,
Waited, echoes of letters from Darwin, Borneo, Moratai, Brunei (‘We thought him
Dead but the little Jap sat up with gun in hand and took a shot at us’,) the heat
A pressing fist, swamps, insect life (‘A wonderful war’ said his wife who also
Waited) but wait for me wait understand O wait between the lines unread.
Your first-born did not. Tested instead the knife’s weight.
* * *
Let in the strangers first: ‘Apart from his high degree of medical skill he
Possessed warmth’ (enough to make broken grass live? rock burst into flower?
Then why was your first-born cold?) But listen again: ‘It was impossible for
Him to be rude, rough, abrupt.’ Shy virgin bearing gifts to the proud first and
Only born wife, black virgin mother. Night must have come terrible to such a
Kingdom. All lampless creatures sighing in their beds, stones wailing as the
Mated flew apart in sorrow. Near, apart, fluttered, fell apart as feathered
Hopes trembled to earth shaken from the boughs of heaven. By day the heart
Was silent, shook in its box of bone, alone fathered three black dancing imps.
The wicked, the wise and the simple to jump in the house that Jack built: This
Is the priest all shaven and shorn who married the man all tattered and torn
Who kissed the maiden all forlorn who slaughtered the ox who drank the water
Who put out the fire who burnt the staff who smote the dog who bit the cat who
Ate the kid my father bought from the angel of death: ‘Never heard to complain,
Response to inquiry about his health invariably brought a retort causing laughter.’
Laughter in the shadow of the fountain, laughter in the dying fire, laughter
Shaking in the box of bone, laughter fastened in the silent night, laughter
While the children danced from room to room in the empty air.
What ailed the sea that it fled? What ailed the mountains, the romping lambs
Bought with blood? Tremble, earth, before the Lord of the Crow and the Dove
Who turned flint into fountain, created the fruit of the vine devoured by the
Fox who bit the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate up Jack
Who built the house: Yisgaddal v’yiskaddash sh’meh rabbo — miracle of seed,
Mystery of rain, the ripening sun and the failing flesh, courses of stars,
Stress from Sinai.
Let (roared God)
Great big Babylon
Be eaten up by Persia
Be eaten up by Greece
Be eaten up by Rome
Be eaten up by Ottoman
Be eaten by Australia
Where Jack’s house shook.
Be (said Jack’s Dad)
Submissive to an elder
Courteous to the young
Receive all men with
Cheerfulness and
Hold your tongue.
Strangers, remember Jack who did as he was told.
* * *
To the goddess the blood of all creatures is due for she gave it,
Temple and slaughterhouse, maker of curses like worm-eaten peas:
As the thunder vanishes, so shall the woman drive them away
As wax melts before flame, so let the ungodly perish before her:
She is mother of thunder, mother of trees, mother of lakes,
Secret springs, gate to the underworld, vessel of darkness,
Bearer, transformer, dark nourisher, shelterer, container of
Living and dead, coffin of Osiris, dark-egg devourer, engenderer,
Nurturer, nurse of the world, many-armed goddess girdled by cobras,
Flame-spewer, tiger-tongued queen of the dead and the violent dancers.
Mother of songs, dancer of granite, giver of stone —
Let his wife speak:
‘Honour thy father and thy mother’
So have I done and done and done — no marriage shall ever
Consume the black maidenhead — my parents are heaven
Bound. I shall rejoin them;
Bodies of men shall rejoin severed souls
At the ultimate blast of invisible grace.
Below, I burn,
Naomi of the long brown hair, skull in a Juliet cap.
Do the dead rot? Then rot as I rot as they rot.
‘Honour thy Father’ sing Armistice bells, espressivo.
The stumbling fingers are groping
To pitch of perfection.
I am that pitch
I am that perfection.
Papa’s a civilian again, mother is coiled in a corset,
Dispenses perfection with:
Castor oil
Tapestry
Tablecloths (white)
Rectal thermometers
Czerny and prunes
Sonatinas of Hummel
The white meat of fish
The maids and the lost silver.
Lord, I am good for nothing, shall never know want.
Blinded, I burn, am led not into temptation.
The home is the centre of power.
There I reign
Childless. Three daughters, all whores, all —
Should be devoured by the fires of Gehenna
Should be dissolved in the womb that bore them
Should wander the wastelands forever.
Instead, they dance.
Whole towns condemn me. Flames from the roofs
Form my father’s fiery image. He waves, laughs,
Cools his head among stars, leaves me shorn,
Without sons, unsanctified, biting on
Bread of affliction. Naked, I burn,
Orphaned again in a war.
The world is a different oyster:
Mine.
His defection will not be forgotten.
* * *
Blessed be He whose law speaks of the three different characters of children whom
we are to instruct on this occasion:
What says the wicked one?
‘What do you all mean by this?’
This thou shalt ask not, and thou hast transgressed, using you and excluding thyself.
Thou shalt not exclude thyself from:
The collective body of the family
The collective body of the race
The collective body of the nation
Therefore repeat after me:
‘This is done because of what the Eternal did
For me when I came forth from Egypt.’
The wicked wants always the last word (for all the good
It does): ‘Had I been there, I would still not be worth
My redemption.’ Nothing more may be eaten, a beating will
Take place in the laundry. Naked.
‘Honour thy father and thy mother’
What says the wise one?
‘The testimonies, statutes, the judgments delivered by God I accept.’
Nonetheless, though thou are wise,
After the paschal offering there shall be no dessert.
‘Honour thy father and thy mother’
What says the simple one?
Asks merely: ‘What is this?’
Is told: ‘With might of hand
Did our God bring us forth out of Egypt
From the mansion of bondage.’
Any more questions? Ask away and be damned.
‘Honour thy father and thy mother’
* * *
Yisborach, v’yistabach, v’yispoar, v’yisroman, v’yisnaseh, v’yishaddor,
v’yisalleh, v’yishallol, sh’meh d’kudsho, b’rich hu
Praise death who is our God
Live for death who is our God
Die for death who is our God
Blessed be your failure which is our God
Oseh sholom bim’romov, hu yaaseh sholom, olenu v’al kol yisroel, v’imru Omen.
* * *
And he who was never born and cannot inquire shall say:
and a time to be silent
There is a time to forgive
and a time in which to be
Forgiven.
After forgiveness,
Silence.
On a green sweep of Kings Park grass
dappled with late summer shadow
I joined a picnic with Afghani refugees,
sat sedately with the women
demure but spritely in their hijabs,
kids darting, tossing balls,
larking around, politely into food.
Meat balls, hummus and tabouli
mingled with our sizzled sausages
on paper plates. Coke and juice.
Someone had found work.
Someone had been accepted as
a lab technician. Someone’s husband
still in detention three years on.
Did she get to see him?
No, couldn’t get time off,
after school the kids alone
and so on.
Under a far-off tree their fathers,
uncles, brothers brooded, a still
silent circle squinting into sunlight
smoking, looking straight ahead.
Nobody seemed to be thinking of
a better world, nobody was asking
for more than a place to sit quietly
and wait. What weighs the heart must
sit it out till nightfall for release
once everyone’s asleep.
And even then …
Watching all this, in and out of it,
remembering my own young wifehood
as a stranger, my first child born
in an alien tongue, the grey apartment block,
the cold, the speechless folk who passed
without a nod or smile, the men who carried
boxed piled with lurid neckties
from the Krawattenfabrik upstairs.
A condemned building.
Where would we all end up?
The tenants roused the concierge: the baby cries
all night, that pram is blocking the foyer.
Tell the foreigner.
I took it six flights up
and six flights down on sunny days.
Wasps clustered over cherry jam,
the tiny kitchen, scrubbed washboard.
Hovering useless over the baby’s wheezy breath,
I rarely ventured out, avoided peak hours
in the cellar armed with shameful nappies,
took my turn with dread before
the commune’s idol: a glossy water-driven
centrifuge. Its thick black snout
writhed serpentine around the tub,
soap-scummed water spewing forth
from flood-tide whine to whizz
to final cataract. Mesmerised, I bowed.
‘Anyone can marry and have children,’
said my mother far away in cloud-cuckoo
land of Oz, savage with disappointment
for her accomplished daughter, all
the dead scherzos and maimed fugues.
My mother-in-law noted dust balls
gathering under the bed, the wilting
red geraniums in their box,
the cobwebbed pane.
I didn’t join the turbaned band
of broad-arsed women lugging rugs
each day to the courtyard rack,
beating out the grey frustration of
their lives with rattan canes.
‘She ought to be ashamed of all that dust.’
My mother-in-law’s precise Hochdeutsch.
You’d think my husband’s life with me
grievous enough without her fretful chorus.
Months like this as Zürich wives and
spinsters, buttoned to the neck in black,
twitched yellowing curtains, pursed their lips,
beat their fraying carpets in the yard:
tumbled boxes of neckties passing up and down
wasps landing, taking off.
And I, both in and out of it,
learning how to live a life,
sit quiet in a cold place
waiting to touch the sun-warmed earth.
Today we decide to tell the children.
We find them watching two toy-like
spacemen cumbersomely perform a task
on TV’s version of the moon.
They absorb the news, are quiet, watchful.
Surrounded by their costly litter,
the astronauts salute their flag
standing stiffly in the lack of air.
While bodies turn brown and drown in oil
The beach blocks burn in the sun,
Pompeii by the Australian sea.
Sand drifts in lava folds across the bulldozed scrub,
And motorboats make frivolous surf upon the sea.
Hover about the stone barbecue,
To watch the cinders of black flies
Drift down to half cooked meat,
Away to a half filled glass of marsala,
Across to a drunken sleeping hammocked man.
Over and up in an ecstasy of riches
Vomited up thicker than Christmas pudding.
Art does not redeem Eros here,
Enmeshed limbs lie not on perspiring walls
But on casual beds in dissarray.
Only the cats stalk the grass with grace,
While their owners snore grosser than flies.
For Sidney Nolan
The love of man is a weed of the waste places.
One may think of it as the spinifex of dry souls.
I have not, it is true, made the trek to the difficult country
where it is said to grow; but signs come back,
reports come back, of continuing exploration
in that terrain. And certain of our young men,
who turned in despair from the bar, upsetting a glass,
and swore: ‘No more’ (for the tin rooms stank of flyspray)
are sending word that the mastery of silence
alone is empire. What is God, they say,
but a man unwounded in his loneliness?
And the question (applauded, decided) falls like dust
on veranda and bar; and in pauses, when thinking ceases,
the footprints of the recently departed
march to the mind’s horizons, and endure.
And often enough as we turn again, and laugh,
cloud, hide away the tracks with an acid word,
there is one or more gone past the door to stand
(wondering, debating) in the iron street,
and toss a coin, and pass, to the township’s end,
where one-eyed ’Mat, eternal dealer in camels,
grins in his dusty yard like split fruit.
But one who has returned, his eyes blurred maps
of landscapes still unmapped, gives this account:
‘The third day, cockatoos dropped dead in the air.
Then the crows turned back, the camels knelt down and
stayed there,
and a skin-coloured surf of sandhills jumped the horizon
and swamped me. I was bushed for forty years.
‘And I came to a bloke all alone like a kurrajong tree.
And I said to him: “Mate — I don’t need to know your name —
Let me camp in your shade, let me sleep, till the sun goes down.”’
This is the playground circumnavigation:
The leap in space and safe return to land,
Past sea and hills, boats, trees, familiar buildings,
Back to the port of one assisting hand.
Adventurers learn here, but do not venture
Yet from their circular continuous sweep
From start to start. Where going is homing-turning
Nothing is lost, what’s won is all to keep.
The gulls stoop down, the big toy jerks and flies;
And time is tethered where its centre lies.
Exhausted summer. New sails in the roadsteads are
the flags of homelessness: like you, a hearth.
Like you, I say. In the cool great rooms where dawn
unclouds as from a metal cup just emptied
and in the warm peach-coloured rooms by lamplight
I say: ‘Like you. Thus — thus — she was like you.’
Where have been all my sailings, all my islands,
but here, by you, in search of you, my island,
whose pools, palms, dunes I feigned to find in others,
not doubting those dissembled, I dissembled.
Till, in dawn rooms, by evening under lamplight,
turning, I find you: all my quest, and yet
(changed by my searching, borrowing from those others)
more than I left; not less than both our lives.
Simplicities of summer fall to drift.
Your eyes distrait. Your eyes tell me of seas,
not without love, only, like mine, recalling
seasons removed, an air, an immortal spring.
The sailmakers whistle, they work at the flags of famine.
I sail for earth’s end, where you wait, in immortal spring.
Snow greys the streets that the molten pewter river
cleaves: O love, as your cloven city cleaves you.
Cloven, I came to your other, your winter world,
intending harm (you had done me such springlike harm).
Coming to force an encounter, and a crisis:
for spring’s wound throbbed in the frost, till the blood was stirred
against the voice that had said I must not follow
— ‘O love, I would die — see, love, I have died for you.’
I came with the wound of spring to the winter city
that holds my spring in one of ten million lodgings
to find you, free you, uproot you, most tender-rooted
hybrid, who must half die if I have my will.
And every street threatened irremediable meetings;
in every train-shrill tunnel the winter faces
promised to turn upon me your winter face,
saying winter words. And love, I was afraid.
Yet I would have you know I have been, and gone.
I would have you think of me on another island
where it is never quite spring, but an ache and waiting,
foreshadowed nostalgia, voices once heard half-heard.
The wind has scattered my city to the sheep.
Capeweed and lovely lupins choke the street
where the wind wanders in great gaunt chimneys of hay
and straws cry out like keyholes.
Our yellow Petra of the fields: alas!
I walk the ruins of forum and capital
through quiet squares, by the temples of tranquillity.
Wisps of the metropolis brush my hair.
I become invisible in tears.
This was no ratbags’ Eden: these were true haystacks.
Golden, but functional, our mansions sprang from dreams
of architects in love (O my meadow queen!).
No need for fires to be lit on the yellow hearthstones;
our walls were warmer than flesh, more sure than igloos.
On winter nights we squatted naked as Esquimaux,
chanting our sagas of innocent chauvinism.
In the street no vehicle passed. No telephone,
doorbell or till was heard in the canyons of hay.
No stir, no sound, but the sickle and the loom,
and the comments of emus begging by kitchen doors
in the moonlike silence of morning.
Though the neighbour states (said Lao Tse) lie in sight of the city
and their cocks wake and their watchdogs warn the inhabitants
the men of the city of hay will never go there
all the days of their lives.
But the wind of the world descended on lovely Petra
and the spires of the towers and the statues and belfries fell.
The bones of my brothers broke in the breaking columns.
The bones of my sisters, clasping their broken children,
cracked on the hearthstones, under the rooftrees of hay.
I alone mourn in the temples, by broken altars
bowered in black nightshade and mauve salvation-jane.
And the cocks of the neighbour nations scratch in the straw.
And their dogs rejoice in the bones of all my brethren.
In a sudden stillness
the Easter lilies she gave me
from her jungle garden
occupy the room.
Could she have known?
Eyes locked on eyes
hands locked on hands.
So was rapt Amyclae
undone by silence.
Two watches whisper
and on the table
a little scented pollen falls.
I stood thigh deep
in wild oats on
a roadside verge
of mine. This spring
greening had plumped them.
The full heads nodded
heavy on emerald fibre optic shafts
and swayed in the breath
that shook
the loose-leafed eucalypts.
would come like a
brazen border-invader
soaring up the stalks
with a brief
rinse of gold
before husks become pale flags
fluttering
at the edge of farms.
Then we must think
a falling spark
of conflagration
in this dry grass
could sweep for miles.
Better to act now!
A spring burning
would see us safe
all summer long.
But still I stood;
whichever way
I looked, the road
stretched on and on.
After all, this
was just another
growing oat crop.
It’s hard to clear
the feral off
your property.
still burning
in me.
I
In this flat country
of my birth salt lakes extend
water’s brief service
of slanting rainshowers: old
maps, old continents survive
II
This night, waterbirds
gabble, hoot softly across
lake’s lap-lapping dark
as the moon mounts my shoulder
to show where new songs start.
III
Enamelled black / white
stilts from arctic Asian tracts
come down to strut here
on these sleek, bleached salt-lined strands,
in wind-shaken chill waters.
So often lakes shape
the outline vestiges of
most ancient rivers.
But these broadwater shadows
flow only now with cloud shapes.
V
A lime lake’s ripple
driven by the fresh south wind
foams to asses’ milk
on the far boundary shore.
In this lapping mouth trees ache.
VI
Lakes reach out to the skies.
They draw from vaulted cobalt,
give clouded image
back, their ruffled faces still
these sleep-creased faithful imprints.
VII
Stepped out like fence-posts
stalking pylon towers stitch
these summer salt-lakes,
freeze-dried by the moon’s cold shafts.
Salt crystals speak with quiet hate.
This white visitor
returns in my curtained dreams
peering through the lace
of branch and bole to give me,
telegraphically, the moon.
IX
Children skirt lake’s edge
their mallee sticks at the trail.
They scribe this day’s paths
of circumnavigation,
prod that blind white eye of salt.
X
The crunch of the salt
measures every stride we take
on crystals yearning
upward to avenge the plough.
How much salt does a man need?
XI
At pebble height, wind
chases and scours the brown lake’s
tabula rasa.
And samphire circles searching
ways to educate this space.
Salt lakes say to us,
‘The second law of thermo
dynamics? Damn you
for doubting with your axes,
with your seeds sown in furrows!’
XIII
Death spoke to me then,
‘See the fence-posts there, leaning
into the saltmarsh,
the wires festooned with driftweed?
This is where your fences lead.’
XIV
Down by the dry lakes
the hospital crouched in dust,
salt waited for my birth
and the Southern Cross turned in
a night sky of gravidence.
Tapi in Nyiyaparli
Purungu karla kampapi warnili
yilkarila ngalingmarra kurungkali
wirpingka Kurtanakurtana parrkapa
karlakungkuru jirntalara kalpampa
piimaralu karnalpi Marngkurtu parnti pungkupungku junngarrii
karnara yurntu manyankarra
yilkarila ngalingmarra
The faint glow of a burning fire
Is stretched over a cloud in the sky —
There is tall spinifex grass around Kurdanakurdana.
The fire roars and sparks burst from charcoal,
Mirror their flight in the Fortescue River —
Strong smoke is piling up.
At daybreak a cloud layer stretches in the sky.
Tapi in Nyiyaparli
kkarnalilila parnti kurntirrintirri kampakanampa
thaangurla? kurila yartuyulu Watumanti
warnili ngalingmarra thaangurla? Wiyanpala!
pungkupungku thalurapinpa Purnukurntila
Dawn, and smoke gushes and boils.
Where? Southward, same spot on the Tableland as before.
A flat sheet of cloud — Where? Have a look!
Making a thundercloud over the Tableland.