Tomorrow all the camp will know.

The poor dead will be less afraid,

Their tribe brother will be with him

When the dread journey must be made.

‘Have courage, death is not the end,’

He seems to say. ‘Though you must weep,

Death is kindly and is your friend.’

Three nights the curlew cried. Once more

He comes to take the timorous dead –

To what grim change, what ghostly shore?

Note: The curlew was brother of the Aboriginal peoples. He came to warn them of a coming death by crying near a camp three nights in succession. They believed that the curlew came to lead the shade of the dead one away to the unknown world.

Sounds Assail Me

Something obscene

In man-made sounds affronts the sweet and clean,

But Nature's never.

Shout of the stormy winds, ever

Toneless and rude, tossing the trees,

The harsh scream of seabirds – these

Somehow belong

As much as the wren's airy song.

Man only, the books tell, knows evil and wrong;

Even as art now the yelp and yell

Like music of hell,

Music made evil, the squawk and squall

When the disc jockeys loose the blare and bawl.

Give me the sounds God made so –

I love them all

Whether loud or low,

From the small, thin

Note of the bee's violin

To the rough sea's uproar,

In wild tumult tumbling upon the shore.

Tree Grave

When our lost one left us

For the Shadow Land,

In bark we bound him,

A weeping band,

And we bore him, wailing

Our wild death croon

To his lonely tree-grave

By the Long Lagoon.

Our wandering fires

Are now far away,

But our thoughts are turning

By night and day

Where he lies for ever

Under the white moon,

By the lit waters

Of the still lagoon.

His hunts are over

And the songs he made;

Poor lonely fellow,

He will be afraid

When the night winds whisper

Their ghostly tune

In the haunted swamp-oaks

By the Long Lagoon.

Dawn Wail for the Dead

Dim light of daybreak now

Faintly over the sleeping camp.

Old lubra first to wake remembers:

First thing every dawn

Remember the dead, cry for them.

Softly at first her wail begins,

One by one as they wake and hear

Join in the cry, and the whole camp

Wails for the dead, the poor dead

Gone from here to the Dark Place:

They are remembered.

Then it is over, life now,

Fires lit, laughter now,

And a new day calling.

Dark Unmarried Mothers

All about the country,

From earliest teens,

Dark unmarried mothers,

Fair game for lechers –

Bosses and station hands,

And in town and city

Low-grade animals

Prowl for safe prey.

Nothing done about it,

No one to protect them –

But hush, you mustn't say so,

Bad taste or something

To challenge the accepted,

Disturbing the established.

Turn the blind eye,

Wash the hands like Pilate.

Consent? Even with consent

It is still seduction.

Is it a white girl?