Watershed

I am so old, oh very old, my children,
   Ye that are so young,

Slow in the golden morning sun
He lays them tenderly, one by one,

..By a blue winking sea,
The church stands in a green place,
Green as Calvary.

This mountain means discovery, since the day
I climbed it first in boyhood and alone,

Heavy at heart I felt that sombre story
Close in a creeping numbness on my brain;

A worn-out body laid in quiet earth,
Attendant trees, a wattle’s throb of gold,

You may not pass this place. Here you must stop,
Though all the world’s great tides run heedless by

On the mountain-top, before the coming of snow,
The everlastings starred the tufty grass,

Lord of earth and all creation
let your love possess our land;

At first it seemed a trek of migrant ants
climbing the skyline of this great red rock

How name a capital city where kangaroos
stare between leaves, past dome, construction cranes,

Crossing the highway, furtive as a snake,
it slips through bush towards indeterminate hills.

Come down from that Crest! It’s Australia Day, Emu –
We just want to say, mate, how much we esteem you.

Land of the singing light
Light that first I saw
Eighty years and more

Moths! Moths! Moths!
In trouser-leg, singlet and shirt..

“Up here the schooners used to come
  For timber, years ago,

My love and I in all agree
   As one, save this thing only:

Not vile, body, nor foe, flesh,
Your joys deluding, triumphs trash,
Fit to be foiled your every wish.

The host of hills encamped around,
The sleepless army of the stars,

Out of the cloud my Lord the Sun,
Out of the earth my Lady Spring,

Spring held her fire
So long, the long pursuit, the watchers wondered
Would there be ever an end

Twelve foot’s the rise and fall
Of barometric Man

This mountain means discovery, since the day
I climbed it first in boyhood and alone,

Hauled headlong starward by the quadruple conviction
Of lion-lunged engines in their pride of power

Dark sea dark land lie close beneath
The muffling guilt of night,

The sun like a centaur leaping the ranges
Shoots to the heart my garden, shatters
The dew in a volley of wild carillons

Riding the wind, in planetary sweep,
The gull wheels on the radius of a wing.

Straggling off the highway in search of firewood
Past the tins and bottles, through the rusty wire,

Stentorian mountain, resonant as your name,
I greet you with joy, I greet you, I give you thanks

The rousing sun’s sea-dance and dazzle
Burnishes grassy cape and cliff,

Waking to a diapason in the downpipe
I peer through curtained panes to a curtained sky

You hold the timeless in your brief green boughs
The cardboard angels, home-made crib, the straw,
The new-born baby older than Abraham

When you were caught red-rooted in the drain
You wept of course, but did the same again

Down the cliff path, in morning sun
Sliding, we stopped. The beach had gone,

These trees reached up for light
when Jesus walked on earth,

The young magpie, as large as either parent,
Piteously pleads the pathos of his need.

The tree-trunk rounds, a fallen Doric column,
are tumbled on the grass beside my gate.

No dolphin it was, but a six-month suckling whale
gashed and shark-mauled, tribeless, motherless,

Little death of a little dog
In a death-wish world of news by body-count

At first it seemed a trek of migrant ants
climbing the skyline of this great red rock

A garden gracious, serene and spacious at Lambeth –
This is the dream, the vision that shall be its crown

..Three kangaroos, grey eminences, rose
staring, paws crossed, with worried faces fixed,

I heard a man of science tell:
The sun is ringing like a bell,

Come down from that Crest! It’s Australia Day, Emu –
We just want to say, mate, how much we esteem you.

… obliterating in instant mini-time
a universe of suns and planets
with or without their myriad forms of life,

With joyless spade I dig the tiny grave
Asking, who made me lord of life or death?

He lies unblinking, back and corpulent,
first lizard from his hibernation sleep