Four Takes on Australian Art; Four Poems (The Real Australia)

Wandjina

 Mamadai and Wanalirri

Where wandjina shelter.

The god-like face on rock and cave,

Mouthless image of creator.

Round eyes on bark, on canvas, slate:-

Make the rains come soon, come late.

To Harry Wedge, On a Bark by Mithinarri

"You don't know nothing about us."

That's true, Harry, I admit it.

I'm trying. It's the title of your work I bought.

Have you ever been to Arnhem Land?

I can't tell an ancestral file snake

From a rainbow serpent or sacred olive python.

Is that bäpi or the wititj totem?

I've never been to Garrimala

In Galpu Country, to which this bark

Alludes, according to my catalogue.

But I can praise, appreciate.

I'll learn to say - when I'm no longer in the dark-

"Him bin do alright that bark".

Red Hands Cave

Just past

The last

Suburban bungalow,

Where the bush

Begins:

Ochre hand-prints.

Rock incisions.

The only hints

Of ancient visions.

Evidence of

Genocisions.

   

Reflecting, Unreflecting

(The Real Australia)

When I first arrived in Australia

I liked the Ripolin enamels,

The slick metallic sheen,

The shiny lacquer house-paints

Of Nolan's naive Kellys.

I wrote to him

Before he died.

Of course, he couldn't answer.

Now that I'm about to leave,

I've learned to love the mute matt ochres

Of Queenie and of Rover.

There are two more of my Australian poems here 
(on Marrickville and William Dampier,
the first and last of the five poems published in "Two Skies", 2005)

On Cedric Talbot, Didgeridoo

The Apocalyptic Blues, as performed with Cedric Talbot on didgeridoo, Sydney Poetry Olympics:

"The piper sits playing and knows all things fail!
('From 'Didjeridoo', F.T. Macartney, Jindyworobak Anthology, 1942


Sometimes I feel like a Jindy...

On the Jindyworobak Movement

JINDYWOROBAK, Towards an Australian Culture, KENNETH H. CIFFORD.

See also: The Sydney Poetry Olympics, 1995-1997