'Share with others what you hold;'

Hears the age-old racial call:

'What we have belongs to all.'

Now she gives with generous hand

White man tucker to that band,

Full tin plate and pannikin

To each hunter, child and gin.

Joyful, on the ground they sit,

With only hands for eating it.

Then upon their way they fare,

Bellies full and no more care.

Cookalingee, lubra still

Feels her dark eyes softly fill,

Watching as they go content,

Natural as nature meant.

And for all her place and pay

Is she happy now as they?

Wistfully she muses on

Something bartered, something gone.

Songs of old remembered days,

The walkabout, the old free ways.

Blessed with everything she prized,

Trained and safe and civilised,

Much she has that they have not,

But is hers the happier lot?

Lonely in her paradise

Cookalingee sits and cries.

United We Win

The glare of a thousand years is shed on the black man's wistful face,

Fringe-dweller now on the edge of towns, one of a dying race;

But he has no bitterness in his heart for the white man just the same;

He knows he has white friends today, he knows they are not to blame.

Curse no more the nation's great, the glorious pioneers,

Murderers honoured with fame and wealth, won of our blood and tears;

Brood no more on the bloody past that is gone without regret,

But look to the light of happier days that will shine for your children yet.

For in spite of public apathy and the segregation pack

There is mateship now, and the good white hand stretched out to grip the black.

He knows there are white friends here today who will help us fight the past,

Till a world of workers from shore to shore as equals live at last.

Song

Life is ours in vain

Lacking love, which never

Counts the loss or gain.

But remember, ever

Love is linked with pain.

Light and sister shade

Shape each mortal morrow

Seek not to evade

Love's companion Sorrow,

And be not dismayed.

Grief is not in vain,

It's for our completeness.

If the fates ordain

Love to bring life sweetness,

Welcome too its pain.

God's One Mistake

(It repenteth me that I have made man. - Genesis, 6)

I who am ignorant and know so little,

So little of life and less of God,

This I do know

That happiness is intended and could be,

That all wild simple things have life fulfilled

Save man,

That all on earth have natural happiness

Save man.

Without books or schools, lore or philosophy

In my own heart I know

That hate is wrong,

Injustice evil.

Pain there must be and tears,

Sorrow and death, but not

Intolerance, unkindness, cruelty,

Unless men choose

The mean and base, which Nature never made,

But we alone.

And sometimes I will think that God looks down

With loving smile, saying,

'Poor child, poor child, maybe I was wrong