Australia 1970

Judith Wright

Die, wild country, like the eaglehawk,

dangerous till the last breath's gone,
clawing and striking. Die
cursing your captor through a raging eye.

Die like the tigersnake

that hisses such pure hatred from its pain
as fills the killer's dreams
with fear like suicide's invading stain.

Suffer, wild country, like the ironwood

that gaps the dozer-blade.
I see your living soil ebb with the tree
to naked poverty.

Die like the soldier-ant

mindless and faithful to your million years.
Though we corrupt you with our torturing mind.
stay obstinate; stay blind.

For we are conquerors and self-poisoners

more than scorpion or snake
and dying of the venoms that we make
even while you die of us.

I praise the scoring drought, the flying dust,

the drying creek, the furious animal,
that they oppose us still;
that we are ruined by the thing we kill.
 Parrot
by Stevie Smith

The old sick green parrot

High in a dingy cage
Sick with malevolent rage
Beadily glutted his furious eye
On the old dark
Chimneys of Noel Park

Far from his jungle green

Over the seas he came
To the yellow skies, to the dripping rain,
To the night of his despair.
And the pavements of his street
Are shining beneath the lamp
With a beauty that’s not for one
Born under a tropic sun.

He has croup.
His feathered chest
Knows no minute of rest.
High on his perch he sits
And coughs and spits,
Waiting for death to come.
Pray heaven it won’t be long.
 The Darkling Thrush
Thomas Hardy - 1840-1928
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I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day. So little cause for carolings
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Of such ecstatic sound
Like strings of broken lyres, Was written on terrestrial things
And all mankind that haunted nigh Afar or nigh around,
Had sought their household fires.
That I could think there trembled through
The land's sharp features seemed to be His happy good-night air
The Century's corpse outleant, Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
His crypt the cloudy canopy, And I was unaware.
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among

The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
The Spring

by Thomas Carew

Now that the winter's gone, the earth hath lost

Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost
Candies the grass, or casts an icy cream
Upon the silver lake or crystal stream;
But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth,
And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth
To the dead swallow; wakes in hollow tree
The drowsy cuckoo and the humble-bee.
Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring
In triumph to the world the youthful spring.
The valleys, hills, and woods in rich array
Welcome the coming of the long'd-for May.
Now all things smile; only my love doth lour;
Nor hath the scalding noonday sun the power
To melt that marble ice, which still doth hold
Her heart congeal'd, and makes her pity cold.
The ox, which lately did for shelter fly
Into the stall, doth now securely lie
In open fields; and love no more is made
By the fireside, but in the cooler shade
Amyntas now doth with his Chloris sleep
Under a sycamore, and all things keep
Time with the season; only she doth carry
June in her eyes, in her heart January.
At the Parrot House, Taronga Park
by Vivian Smith

What images could yet suggest their range

of tender colours, thick as old brocade,
or shot silk or flowers on a dress
where black and rose and lime seem to caress
the red that starts to shimmer as they fade?

Like something half-remembered from a dream

they come from places we have never seen.

They chatter and they squawk and sometimes scream.

Here the macaw clings at the rings to show

the young galahs talking as they feed
with feathers soft and pink as dawn on snow
that it too has a dry and dusky tongue.
Their murmuring embraces every need
from languid vanity to wildest greed.

In the far corner sit two smoky crones

their heads together in a kind of love.
One cleans the other’s feathers while it moans.
The others seem to whisper behind fans
while noble dandies gamble in a room
asserting values everyone rejects.

A lidded eye observes, and it reflects.

The peacocks still pretend they own the yard.

For all the softness, how the beaks are hard.

 The Storm-Wind
William Barnes

When the swift-rolling brook, swollen deep,

Rushes on by the alders, full speed,
And the wild-blowing winds lowly sweep
O'er the quivering leaf and the weed,
And the willow tree writhes in each limb,
Over sedge-reeds that reel by the brim —

The man that is staggering by

Holds his hat to his head by the brim;
And the girl, as her hair-locks outfly,
Puts a foot out, to keep herself trim,
And the quivering wavelings o'erspread
The small pool where the bird dips his head.

But out at my house, in the lee

Of the nook, where the winds die away,
The light swimming airs, round the tree
And the low-swinging ivy stem, play
So soft that a mother that's nigh
Her still cradle may hear her babe sigh.
1
Stormcock in Elder By Ruth Pitter

In my dark hermitage, aloof

From the world’s sight and the world’s sound, The flight-feathers in tail and wing,
By the small door where the old roof The shorter coverts, and the white
Hangs but five feet above the ground, Merged into russet, marrying
I groped along the shelf for bread The bright breast to the pinions bright,
But found celestial food instead: Gold sequins, spots of chestnut, shower
Of silver, like a brindled flower.
For suddenly close at my ear,
Loud, loud and wild, with wintry glee, Soldier of fortune, northwest Jack,
The old unfailing chorister Old hard-times’ braggart, there you blow
Burst out in pride of poetry; But tell me ere your bagpipes crack
And through the broken roof I spied How you can make so brave a show,
Him by his singing glorified. Full-fed in February, and dressed
Like a rich merchant at a feast.
Scarcely an arm’s-length from the eye,
Myself unseen, I saw him there;
The throbbing throat that made the cry,
The breast dewed from the misty air,
The polished bill that opened wide One-half the world, or so they say,
And showed the pointed tongue inside; Knows not how half the world may live;
So sing your song and go your way,
The large eye, ringed with many a ray And still in February contrive
Of minion feathers, finely laid, As bright as Gabriel to smile
The feet that grasped the elder-spray; On elder-spray by broken tile.
How strongly used, how subtly made
The scale, the sinew, and the claw,
Plain through the broken roof I saw;
1
Also known as 'Mistle Thrush' It gets its country name 'stormcock' because it sings in all weathers. There's something about its clear, tumbling song that puts one in
mind of the peace and clarity that comes after a heavy spring rain shower.
 Watching For Dolphins
David Constantine

In the summer months on every crossing to Piraeus

One noticed that certain passengers soon rose
From seats in the packed saloon and with serious
Looks and no acknowledgement of a common purpose
Passed forward through the small door into the bows
To watch for dolphins. One saw them lose

Every other wish. Even the lovers

Turned their desires on the sea, and a fat man
Hung with equipment to photograph the occasion
Stared like a saint, through sad bi-focals; others,
Hopeless themselves, looked to the children for they
Would see dolphins if anyone would. Day after day

Or on their last opportunity all gazed

Undecided whether a flat calm were favourable
Or a sea the sun and the wind between them raised
to a likeness of dolphins. Were gulls a sign, that fell
Screeching from the sky or over an unremarkable place
Sat in a silent school? Every face

After its character implored the sea.

All, unaccustomed, wanted epiphany,
Praying the sky would clang and the abused Aegean
Reverberate with cymbal, gong and drum.
We could not imagine more prayer, and had they then
On the waves, on the climax of our longing come

Smiling, snub nosed, domed like satyrs, oh

We should have laughed and lifted the children up
Stranger to stranger, pointing how with a leap
They left their element, three or four times, centred
On grace, and heavily and warm re-entered,
Looping the keel. We should have felt them go

Further and further into the deep parts. But soon

We were among the great tankers, under their chains
In black water. We had not seen the dolphins
But woke, blinking. Eyes cast down
With no admission of disappointment the company
Dispersed and prepared to land in the city.