South of My Days

I came across an article this morning (link here) which noted that Judith Wright had been one of five women amongst seventy writers considered for the 1967 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Wright (link here) like me came from New England and I share her love of the New England bush. She was a great Australian, an extraordinary poet, a lifelong social and environmental activist, and a strong supporter of Indigenous rights, joining Nugget Coombs and Stewart Harris as members of the Aboriginal Treaty Committee. Their 1985 book We call for a Treaty is just one indicator of their prescience in relation to Indigenous social justice.

She wrote some wonderfully evocative poems about the Australian bush and its central relationship to our identity as Australians, a relationship which is arguably undergoing inexorable change. She also wrote a number of poems such a Bora Ring and Nigger’s Leap about Indigenous Australian’s and their treatment at the hands of settles (which included Wright’s own family).

I thought I would honour her memory at the start of the year by reproducing here two of her poems: the very well-known South of My Days and the shorter and more amusing poem Magpies.

South of My Days

South of my days' circle, part of my blood's country,
rises that tableland, high delicate outline
of bony slopes wincing under the winter,
low trees, blue-leaved and olive, outcropping granite-
clean, lean, hungry country. The creek's leaf-silenced,
willow choked, the slope a tangle of medlar and crabapple
branching over and under, blotched with a green lichen;
and the old cottage lurches in for shelter.

O cold the black-frost night. The walls draw in to the warmth
and the old roof cracks its joints; the slung kettle
hisses a leak on the fire. Hardly to be believed that summer will turn up again some day in a wave of rambler-roses,
thrust it's hot face in here to tell another yarn-
a story old Dan can spin into a blanket against the winter.
Seventy years of stories he clutches round his bones.
Seventy years are hived in him like old honey.

Droving that year, Charleville to the Hunter,
nineteen-one it was, and the drought beginning;
sixty head left at the McIntyre, the mud round them
hardened like iron; and the yellow boy died
in the sulky ahead with the gear, but the horse went on,
stopped at Sandy Camp and waited in the evening.
It was the flies we seen first, swarming like bees.
Came to the Hunter, three hundred head of a thousand-
cruel to keep them alive - and the river was dust.

Or mustering up in the Bogongs in the autumn
when the blizzards came early. Brought them down; we
brought them down, what aren't there yet. Or driving for Cobb's on the run
up from Tamworth-Thunderbolt at the top of Hungry Hill,
and I give him a wink. I wouldn't wait long, Fred,
not if I was you. The troopers are just behind,
coming for that job at the Hillgrove. He went like a luny, him on his big black horse.

Oh, they slide and they vanish
as he shuffles the years like a pack of conjuror's cards.
True or not, it's all the same; and the frost on the roof
cracks like a whip, and the back-log break into ash.
Wake, old man. This is winter, and the yarns are over.
No-one is listening
South of my days' circle
I know it dark against the stars, the high lean country
full of old stories that still go walking in my sleep. 

Magpies

Along the road the magpies walk
with hands in pockets, left and right.
They tilt their heads, and stroll and talk.
In their well-fitted black and white.

They look like certain gentlemen 
who seem most nonchalant and wise
until their meal is served - and then
what clashing beaks, what greedy eyes!

But not one man that I have heard 
throws back his head in such a song
of grace and praise - no man nor bird. 
Their greed is brief; their joy is long.
For each is born with such a throat 
as thanks his God with every note.