© 2002 Max Merckenschlager
Mary, this forsaken land's become my cross of sorrow
the holding pens are empty now, I’m moving out tomorrow.
I'll leave these picture ranges where the wily dingo calls
and their framing redgum lintels, adzed and mortared in our walls.
You followed me, remember, with the children in the dray
to a roof of ill-thatched rushes and a floor of beaten clay?
It had no door or chimney - barely refuge when it rained
yet you helped me build the stockyards first, and never once complained.
I curse this country's grandeur, cut by rocky gorges steep
with a thousand opportunities for blacks to butcher sheep
where worthy men are hard to find who'll work an honest day
and after drought for twenty months, the tracks get washed away.
Our bullocks fought to shift the wool through Pichi Richi Pass
and some were lamed by stony ground and fiercely-bristled grass.
Through winding creeks and double-banked they'd bellow under strain
and axle-arms would bend and snap, when buried by the rain.
Saltbush, Mary - how the ewes were thriving on its feed!
We dared to dream they'd cut us tons and fatten up and breed.
But governments reduced our run and put the best to plough
they thought the rain would follow - but it's rusting strippers, now.
While Nature's pyrrhic victory resounds in every gorge
her 'inland snow' is burying our follies of the forge.
They'll join those ghostly northern towns that leapt from page to pegs
and disappear like sobered schemes of desiccated kegs.
And through it all we managed, Mary, holding on with pride
until we lost our youngest, when he wandered off and died.
This savage and bewitching country sucked the life we gave
it stole our son to break my will, and hugs you in your grave.
I'm leaving in the morning, Mary, heading down the track
and though my heart is buried here, I'm never coming back.
Dear, take a final walk with me beneath these brimming skies.
They promised us prosperity - but all we got was lies. |
