Les Murray returns from Sydney
To reclaim a personal heritage
His childhood home
Full of memories of
Time spent on
A dairy farm;
Of a woodcutter father
Working hard there,
Mother who died,
And a feud silent
Between a grandfather
And a dad,
Unable to forget and forgive,
The trees full of white ants,
That killed one of the siblings.
The promised farm never materialized,
And his dad went back to the tree-cutting,
In order to survive;
The return from Sydney
Was reclaiming his regional
Australian roots,
And finding again there
The continent’s true face!
Among the aboriginals, farmers and authors,
The great Murray,
The Bard of Australia,
Discovered the Soul of his
Culture that was missing
In the glittering cities.
Urban centers are
Alike these days
Everywhere but the way
Farmers in rural Australia
Work hard against the odds,
Gets mirrored in poets and writers,
And like aboriginals,
These communities carry nature
Within their selves as sacred,
And that act of getting connected
With nature in a sublime way,
Makes Murray the great voice,
Booming,
Coming down from
Outback/steppes/deserts
You hear often,
On lonely nights,
On the desolate highways,
Echoing loudly---
In the fevered,
Rational,
Calculating,
Profit-seeking,
Stock-exchange-fixed
Minds and hearts.
