Australia to her Children

Where now the virgin forest reigns
In solitary state

Where wooded hills run downward to the sea,
Beside a land-locked harbour, still and deep

A merchant ship came sailing here today,
Her timbers stained, her cordage worn and old

I wake to the sound of the chapel Bell,
And I roll from my bed at dawning

The dappled sunlight heard those airy footsteps on the grass,
   Rustling in the coppice and
   Dancing on the sward.

The dusky storm and the grey half-light,
The whispered word and a muffled tread

When the grimy ships go down,
Down the river to the sea
Dirty decks and funnels brown

Cambyses is the name men call me. King
Of Persia once and Egypt.

We sing of sunken treasure-ships in coral-girt lagoons,
And ancient casquets burst with weight of ducats and dubloons,

Look where he lies, a clod of earth at best,
Yet colder than a clod, for where there shone

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

I stood in the street in the morning,
On a blue and shiny day.

I’ve never killed a Marquis in a fight,
Nor led a lovely lady’s feet astray

O mortal man, how fleeting is true bliss,
So eager sought, so often seeming found

Full many wise old men have said
   That this world has more ill than good

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

He spoke with eager grace, and learnedly,
Of matters strange, dark, wonderful to me

Music and the Heart run hand in hand
Naked over the shining sand,

In the summit song of youth
A quiet quick catch of the breath.

Before I loved or knew you were
   I spoke as I had eyes,

Out of this questioning, eventual truth;
Out of this doubt, faith rooted in the rock;

Alone to walk the dripping woods of spring
   While daisies spy you?

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

‘All things are flux: there’s nothing fast,’
Said Heraclitus, ages past,

…the thunder growling,
And winds mounting, and the sky falling,
And night, and you not here.

This is where the water hurries under the archway,
This is where we enter the long tunnel,

Gone away, away,
Suddenly at a word departed,

Come death suddenly from the sea or cloud,
With the blast of thunder and the blinding shroud,

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

Part of me for ever is the January morning
Coming into the Clyde in the frosty moonlight

..The fifth day of November, Fifty North and Forty West,
Was edging to its departure, like an undecided guest,

The drowsy air, the throngs that gaze,
The ceremonial stir,
Mixed with the drone of Latin phrase..

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

My nine-hours son, so wrinkle-faced
Wry concentration of distaste
To find your Person so displaced,

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,

Could we locate the enemy of mankind
(I mean the GHQ, the Centre itself,

You spoke, after long years, about the morning
That followed the night your first-born son was born:

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

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

Like liquid silk in golden eddies
the honey laps into my tin.

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

You are late coming home
To the house we share
An audible silence
Chills the air

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

They’re burning Old Sox’s shack
Just two weeks since he died.

My love, I watch you thread your way, and turn
with a small timeless smile, and trail your trolley
unhurried through the gate of no return.

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

Spring, at a bound. Once more the colourful chorus,
Daffodils first declare their lyric yellow,

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

Now for your birthday the single prunus bough,
by neighbour ’s kindness spared on a sentenced tree

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

Always a step ahead, you’re eighty-three,
My life-support, contending other me,

Down arches of the years I hear your voice
explaining serials of our late departures,

Six years since your last birthday in our midst
seems yesterday, in this same so-loved house,

Wrapped in my gown of self-regard sublime
I heard your voice arrive from outer space.

Knowing the time was short
Yours was the instant thought
‘Let’s go up to the Rocks!’

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

Ten years since that incalculable day
When from all worlds we know you slipped away

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,

From this rock spine, not three feet wide,
Rivers of a continent divide

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