Judith Wright

“Two Songs For The World's End I Bombs ripen on the leafless tree under which the children play. And there my darling all alone dances in the spying day. I gave her nerves to feel her pain, I put her mortal beauty on. I taught her love that hate might find, its black work the easier done. I sent her out alone to play; and I must watch, and I must hear, how underneath the leafless tree, the children dance and sing with Fear. II Lighted by the rage of time where the blind and dying weep, in my shadow take your sleep, though wakeful I. Sleep unhearing while I pray - Should the red tent of the sky fall to fold your time away, wake to weep before you die. Die believing all is true that love your maker said to you Still believe that had you lived you would have found love, world, sight, sound, sorrow, beauty - all true. Grieve for death your moment - grieve. The world, the lover you must take, is the murderer you will meet. But if you die before you wake never think death sweet.”

“Now my five sensesgather into a meaningall acts, all presences;and as a lily gathersthe elements together,in me this dark and shining,that stillness and that moving,these shapes that spring from nothing,become a rhythm that dances,a pure design.While I'm in my five sensesthey send me spinningall sounds and silences,all shape and colouras thread for that weaver,whose web within me growingfollows beyond my knowingsome pattern sprung from nothing-a rhythm that dancesand is not mine.”

“I saw our golden years on a black gale,our time of love spilt in the furious dust."O we are winter-caught, and we must fail,"said the dark dream, "and time is overcast."-And woke into the night; but you were there,and small as seed in the wild dark we lay.Small as seed under the gulfs of airis set the stubborn heart that waits for day.I saw our love the root that holds the vinein the enduring earth, that can reply,"Nothing shall die unless for me it die.Murder and hate and love alike are mine";and therefore fear no winter and no stormwhile in the knot of earth that root lies warm.”

“So here, twisted in steel, and spoiled with redyour sunlight hide, smelling of death and fear,they crushed out your throat the terrible songyou sang in the dark ranges. With what cryingyou mourned him! - the drinker of blood, the swift death-bringerwho ran with you so many a night; and the night was long.I heard you, desperate poet, Did you hearmy silent voice take up the cry? - replying:Achilles is overcome, and Hector dead,and clay stops many a warrior's mouth, wild singer.Voice from the hills and the river drunken with rain,for your lament the long night was too brief.Hurling your woes at the moon, that old cleaned bone,till the white shorn mobs of stars on the hill of the skyhuddled and trembled, you tolled him, the rebel one.Insane Andromache, pacing your towers alone,death ends the verse you chanted; here you lie.The lover, the maker of elegies is slain,and veiled with blood her body's stealthy sun.”

“The blacksmith's boy went out with a rifleand a black dog running behind.Cobwebs snatched at his feet,rivers hindered him,thorn branches caught at his eyes to make him blindand the sky turned into an unlucky opal,but he didn't mind.I can break branches, I can swim rivers, I can stare out any spider I meet,said he to his dog and his rifle.The blacksmith's boy went over the paddockswith his old black hat on his head.Mountains jumped in his way,rocks rolled down on him,and the old crow cried, You'll soon be dead.And the rain came down like mattocks.But he only said,I can climb mountains, I can dodge rocks, I can shoot an old crow any day,and he went on over the paddocks.When he came to the end of the day, the sun began falling,Up came the night ready to swallow him,like the barrel of a gun,like an old black hat,like a black dog hungry to follow him.Then the pigeon, the magpie and the dove began wailingand the grass lay down to pillow him.His rifle broke, his hat blew away and his dog was gone and the sun was falling.But in front of the night, the rainbow stood on the mountain,just as his heart foretold.He ran like a hare,he climbed like a fox;he caught it in his hands, the colours and the cold -like a bar of ice, like the column of a fountain,like a ring of gold.The pigeon, the magpie and the dove flew up to stare,and the grass stood up again on the mountain.The blacksmith's boy hung the rainbow on his shoulderinstead of his broken gun.Lizards ran out to see, snakes made way for him,and the rainbow shone as brightly as the sun.All the world said, Nobody is braver, nobody is bolder,nobody else has doneanything equal to it. He went home as easy as could bewith the swinging rainbow on his shoulder.”

“The song is gone; the danceis secret with the dancers in the earth,the ritual useless, and the tribal storylost in an alien tale.Only the grass stands upto mark the dancing-ring; the apple-gumsposture and mime a past corroboree,murmur a broken chant.The hunter is gone; the spearis splintered underground; the painted bodiesa dream the world breathed sleeping and forgot.The nomad feet are still.Only the rider's hearthalts at a sightless shadow, an unsaid wordthat fastens in the blood of the ancient curse,the fear as old as Cain.”

“Tunnelling through the night, the trains passin a splendour of power, with a sound like thundershaking the orchards, wakingthe young from a dream, scattering like glassthe old mens' sleep, layinga black trail over the still bloom of the orchards;the trains go north with guns.Strange primitive piece of flesh, the heart laid quiethearing their cry pierce through its thin-walled caverecalls the forgotten tiger,and leaps awake in its old panic riot;and how shall mind be sober,since blood's red thread still binds us fast in history?Tiger, you walk through all our past and future,troubling the children's sleep'; layinga reeking trail across our dreams of orchards.Racing on iron errands, the trains go by,and over the white acres of our orchardshurl their wild summoning cry, their animal cry….the trains go north with guns.”

“The eastward spurs tip backward from the sun.Nights runs an obscure tide round cape and bayand beats with boats of cloud up from the seaagainst this sheer and limelit granite head.Swallow the spine of range; be dark. O lonely air.Make a cold quilt across the bone and skullthat screamed falling in flesh from the lipped cliffand then were silent, waiting for the flies.Here is the symbol, and climbing darka time for synthesis. Night buoys no warningover the rocks that wait our keels; no bellssound for the mariners. Now must we measureour days by nights, our tropics by their poles,love by its end and all our speech by silence.See in the gulfs, how small the light of home.Did we not know their blood channelled our rivers,and the black dust our crops ate was their dust?O all men are one man at last. We should have knownthe night that tidied up the cliffs and hid themhad the same question on its tongue for us.And there they lie that were ourselves writ strange.Never from earth again the coolamonor thin black children dancing like the shadowsof saplings in the wind. Night lips the harshscarp of the tableland and cools its granite.Night floods us suddenly as historythat has sunk many islands in its good time.”