Face of the City by Grace Perry

They are changing the face of the city;
old buildings of sandstone are tumbling down.
The drill bites deep till raw nerves tremble,
and steel on steel scream shatters ground.
Unanaesthetised but uncomplaining,
cavernous mouth and haunted eyes
feel each shiver of wide incisions,
retracted muscles quivering
as rough hands chisel at splintered bone,
and a whistle shrills for the man suspended
above the ruin and broken stones.

Source: The ABC Book of Australian Poetry: a treasury for young people compiled by Libby Hathorn (ABC Books 2010)

Supermarket by Libby Hathorn

There’s the jingle and the jangle
Of the trolleys when they tangle,
Toilet tissue, cracker biscuits, what to choose?
Canned tomatoes, and lime jelly
Nuts and raisins, vermicelli
Rice and flour, pickles sour as we cruise.

There’s the whooshing and the wheezing
Of the doors where food is freezing—
Choc chip ice cream, frozen vegies
Stacks of packets brightly teasing.

There’s the humming and the ha-ing,
Dark green apples or bright red?
Runny honey or the candied?
Crusty buns or fresh sliced bread?

There’s the wiling and the waiting
In the checkout queue and then
There’s the adding, pushing, packing,
Whew! Won’t be back here until—when?

Next week.

Source: The ABC Book of Australian Poetry: a treasury for young people compiled by Libby Hathorn (ABC Books 2010)

Took the Children Away by Archie Roach (Nourishing Terrains)

This story’s right, the story’s true

I would not tell lies to you

Like the promises they did not keep

And how they fenced us in like sheep

Said to us come take our hand

Sent us off to mission land

Taught us to read, to write and pray,

Then took the children away.

Took the Children away

The Children away

Snatched from their mother’s breast

Said it was for the best

Took them away…

One sweet day all the children came back

The children came back

The children came back

Back where their hearts grow strong

Back where they all belong

The children came back

Said the children came back

The children came back

Back where they understand

Back to their mother’s land

The children came back.

Source: The ABC Book of Australian Poetry: a treasury for young people compiled by Libby Hathorn (ABC Books 2010)

Tree Australia Tree by Libby Hathorn

Hey, bottlebrush you!

When your fire-flowers enchant us,

I know why the bush birds

Are drawn to your branches.

And banksia gnarled,

So strange by the moon,

Who could not wonder

At your woody blooms?

Tree Australia Tree

Hey, rainforest monarch!

With your buttress so grand,

Who could walk in your forests

And not understand?

Boxwood, strangler fig,

Stinging tree, cedar rare.

All have their own place,

All belong here.

Tree Australia Tree

Hey, boab so fat!

With your water in store,

Only they share your secret

Who know the bush lore.

Hey, scribbly gum, river gum,

Ghost gum supreme!

If eucalypt’s king here

Then wattle is queen.

For you, sumptuous wattle,

Ablaze, yellow bold,

Who cannot delight

In your great gusts of gold?

Tree Australia Tree

Tree Australia Tree

Tree Australia Tree

Source: The ABC Book of Australian Poetry: a treasury for young people compiled by Libby Hathorn (ABC Books 2010)

Andy’s Gone with Cattle by Henry Lawson

Our Andy’s gone with cattle now –

Our hearts are out of order –

With drought he’s gone to battle now

Across the Queensland border.

He’s left us in dejection now,

Our thoughts with him are roving;

It’s dull on this selection now,

Since Andy went a-droving.

Who now shall wear the cheerful face

In times when things are slackest?

And who shall whistle round the place

When Fortune frowns her blackest?

Oh, who shall cheek the squatter now

When he comes round us snarling?

His tongue is growing hotter now

Since Andy crossed the Darling.

Oh, may the showers in torrents fall,

And all the tanks run over;

And may the grass grow green and tall

In pathways of the drover;

And may good angels send the rain

On desert stretches sandy;

And when the summer comes again

God grant ’twill bring us Andy.

 

Source: The ABC Book of Australian Poetry: a treasury for young people compiled by Libby Hathorn (ABC Books 2010)

Tree by Kevin Hart

It takes a life to understand a tree.

You start by climbing high, by holding eggs

Like eyes in the curved eyelids of a young hand,

Then take away plump scratchy nests, still warm,

By thinking other things. Branches will wave

As though to seek your help, but then they go

Just like the ants and leaves marked hard with lines.

Summer will pass with rich dark smells of earth

And then the sound of wind in branches—yes,

That too will slide into the void you hold

With next door’s silky oak that vaguely sighed

One early morning, deep in the pulp of Spring,

Then fell on power lines and through a house.

It takes a life to understand a tree

But life climbs quickly, climbs with claws, and so

You haven’t stood beneath a tree for long

And all that’s left is a sparkle up there, high,

A glistening that you can hardly see,

That beckons you toward it, nonetheless,

And somehow tells you that there is no void.

 

Source: The ABC Book of Australian Poetry: a treasury for young people compiled by Libby Hathorn (ABC Books 2010)

Ballad of the Drover by Henry Lawson

Across the stony ridges,

Across the rolling plain,

Young Harry dale, the drover,

Comes riding home again.

And well his stock-horse bears him,

And light of heart is he,

And stoutly his old packhorse

Is trotting by his knee.

Up Queensland way with cattle

He’s travelled regions vast;

And many months have vanished

Since home-folks saw him last.

He hums a song of someone

He hopes to marry soon;

And hobble-chains and camp-ware

Keep jingling to the tune.

Beyond the hazy dado

Against the lower skies

And yon blue line of ranges

The station homestead lies.

And thitherward the drover

Jogs through the lazy noon,

While hobble-chains and camp-ware

Are jingling to a tune

An hour has filled the heavens

With storm-clouds inky black;

At times the lightning trickles

Around the drover’s track;

But Harry pushes onward,

His horses’ strength he tries,

In hope to reach the river

Before the flood shall rise.

The thunder, pealing o’er him,

Goes rumbling down the plain;

And sweet on thirsty pastures

Beats fast the plashing rain;

The every creek and gully

Sends forth its tribute flood—

The river runs a banker,

All stained with yellow mud.

Now Harry speaks to Rover,

The best dog on the plain

And to his hardy horses,

And strokes their shaggy manes:

‘We’ve breasted bigger rivers

When floods were at their height,

Nor shall this gutter stop us

From getting home tonight!’

The thunder growls a warning

The blue, forked lightings gleam;

The drover turns his horses

To swim the fatal stream.

But, oh! the floods runs stronger

Than e’re it ran before;

The saddle-horse is failing,

And only half-way o’er!

When flashes next the lightning,

The flood’s grey breast is blank

A cattle dog and packhorse

Are struggling up the bank.

But in the lonely homestead

The girl shall wait in vain -

He’ll never pass the stations

In charge of stock again.

The faithful dog a moment

Lies panting on the bank,

Then plunges through the current

To where his master sank.

And round and round in circles

He fights with failing strength,

Till, gripped by wilder waters,

He fails and sinks at length.

Across the flooded lowlands

And slopes of sodden loam

The packhorse struggles bravely

To take dumb tiding home;

And mud-stained wet and weary,

He goes by rock and tree,

With clanging chain and tinware,

All sounding eerily.

 

Source: The ABC Book of Australian Poetry: a treasury for young people compiled by Libby Hathorn (ABC Books 2010)

Clancy of the Overflow by A.B. (Banjo) Paterson

I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better

Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan years ago;

He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him.

Just on spec, addressed as follows, ‘Clancy, of The Overflow’

And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected

(And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar);

’Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:

‘Clancy’s gone to Queensland droving, and we don’t know where he are.’

In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy

Gone a-droving down the Cooper where the Western drovers go;

As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,

For the drover’s life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.

And the bush has friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him

In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,

And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,

And at night the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars.

I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy

Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,

And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city,

Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all.

And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle

Of the tramways and the buses making hurry down the street;

And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting

Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me

As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,

With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,

For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

And I somehow rather fancy that I’d like to change with Clancy,

Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,

While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal–

But I doubt he’d suit the office, Clancy, of The Overflow.

 

Source: The ABC Book of Australian Poetry: a treasury for young people compiled by Libby Hathorn (ABC Books 2010)

The Dusk by Robert Gray

A kangaroo is standing up, and dwindling like a plant

with a single bud.

Fur combed into a line

In the middle of its chest,

a bow-wave

under slanted light, out in the harbour.

And its fine unlined face is held on the cool air:

a face in which you feel

the small thrust-forward teeth lying in the lower jaw,

grass-stained and sharp.

Standing beyond a wire fence, in weeds,

against the bush that is like a wandering smoke.

Mushroom-coloured,

and its white chest, the underside of a growing mushroom,

in the last daylight.

 

Source: The ABC Book of Australian Poetry: a treasury for young people compiled by Libby Hathorn (ABC Books 2010)

The Great Snake by Mary Gilmore

Into a hole into the ground he went,

Into a hole and the darkness before him;

Into the hole he went, and the dark

About him; into the hole he went

And the dark behind him.

No light of moon or sun

Was with him there;

Then with a rock earth closed him in.

Forever he sleeps, save that

Sometimes in dreams he turns.

Then the mountains are shaken.

Source: The ABC Book of Australian Poetry: a treasury for young people compiled by Libby Hathorn (ABC Books 2010)