But remember, white man, if life is for happiness,

You too, surely, have much to change.

Biami

'Mother, what is that one sea,

Sometimes blue or green or yellow?'

'That Biami's waterhole.

He big fellow.'

'Mother, what make sunset fire,

Every night the big red glare?'

'Biami's gunya out that way,

That his camp fire over there.'

'How come great wide river here,

Where we swim and fish with spear?'

'Biami dug him.

You see big hills all about?

They the stuff that he chuck out.'

Note: Among white people Biami is the best known of the great Aboriginal Ancestors who made the world and men. They were not gods, not worshipped, but were highly venerated.

Freedom

For Vivian Charles

Brumby on the wide plain,

All men out to break you,

My warm fellow-feeling

Hopes they never take you!

Dingo on the lone ridge,

Fleeing as you spy them,

Every hand against you,

May you still defy them!

All things wild and tameless,

Hunted down and hated,

Something in my wild heart

With your own is mated.

Dingo, wild bushranger,

Brumby that they ban so,

May you still outmatch them,

May you foil the man-foe!

Return to Nature

Lover of my happy past

Soothe my weariness

With warm embrace.

Turn not from me,

Communicate.

Am I strayed too long

And now forsaken?

Your cold winds freeze

My offered love.

Was it yesterday

Or a thousand years,

My eager feet

Caressed your paths;

My opened fingers

Counted grains of sand

Hidden in the warmth of time.

Now my civilised self

Stamps its imprint

On reluctant sands

And time has flown.

Impatient to converse

My brutalness

Turns you from my touch –

Oh lost, neglected love,

My tear-stained eyes

Open now to see

Your enemy and mine

Is – civilised me.

Hope

As tribal elders sit,

Their tribal thoughts tie their tongue.

We, the foreigners,

In this our land,

Know not

Where lies our future track.

No place forward,

None back.

Hearing their city tribes

Talk the foreign tongue,

They shuffle their tribal feet,

And wait,

And judge,

And soon, within their age-old eyes,

A light appears:

Yes, it was there,

Though but a pinhead size.

Frustrated still

They walk away,

With knowing smile

And gentle voice.

Now …

We hope …

For you have taught us

… hope … there is.

Racism

Stalking the corridors of life,

Black, frustrated minds

Scream for release

From christian racist moulds.

Moulds that enslave

Black independence.

Take care! white racists!

Blacks can be racists too.

A violent struggle could erupt

And racists meet their death.

Colour, the gift of nature

To mankind,

Is now the contentious bone,

And black-white hatred sustains itself

On the rotting, putrid flesh

That once was man.

I Am Proud

I am black of skin among whites,

And I am proud,

Proud of race and proud of skin.

I am broken and poor,

Dressed in rags from white man's back,

But do not think I am ashamed.