{"id":255,"date":"2008-11-27T18:43:14","date_gmt":"2008-11-27T18:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/?p=255"},"modified":"2022-01-18T09:53:45","modified_gmt":"2022-01-18T09:53:45","slug":"poem-south-of-my-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/poem-south-of-my-days\/","title":{"rendered":"Poem: South of My Days"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s poem is by Judith Wright (1915-2000), an Australian poet whose childhood was spent in the Northern Tablelands of New South Wales, and who then spent most of her married life in Mount Tamborine, in south east Queensland (just west of the Gold Coast), moving later to Braidwood<\/a>, in the Southern Tablelands of NSW (east of Canberra).   To always live so close to the sea, but not at it, marked her clearly as someone of the Great Divide<\/a>.   All these places are very familiar to me, and growing up with similar stories of cattle droving and bushrangers such as Thunderbolt<\/a>, her poem resonates greatly.  Of course, the season there now is summer, not the chilling, high-ranges winter she writes of.<\/p>\n

The image that was once above was of the film “Red River”<\/em> by Howard Hawks (1948), which was also about a long cattle drove.<\/p>\n

South of my days’ circle, part of my blood’s country,
\nrises that tableland, high delicate outline
\nof bony slopes wincing under the winter,
\nlow trees, blue-leaved and olive, outcropping granite-
\nclean, lean, hungry country. The creek’s leaf-silenced,
\nwillow choked, the slope a tangle of medlar and crabapple
\nbranching over and under, blotched with a green lichen;
\nand the old cottage lurches in for shelter.
\nO cold the black-frost night. the walls draw in to the warmth
\nand the old roof cracks its joints; the slung kettle
\nhisses a leak on the fire. Hardly to be believed that summer
\nwill turn up again some day in a wave of rambler-roses,
\nthrust it’s hot face in here to tell another yarn-
\na story old Dan can spin into a blanket against the winter.
\nseventy years of stories he clutches round his bones,
\nseventy years are hived in him like old honey.
\nDuring that year, Charleville to the Hunter,
\nnineteen-one it was, and the drought beginning;
\nsixty head left at the McIntyre, the mud round them
\nhardened like iron; and the yellow boy died
\nin the sulky ahead with the gear, but the horse went on,
\nstopped at Sandy Camp and waited in the evening.
\nIt was the flies we seen first, swarming like bees.
\nCame to the Hunter, three hundred head of a thousand-
\ncruel to keep them alive – and the river was dust.
\nOr mustering up in the Bogongs in the autumn
\nwhen the blizzards came early. Brought them down;
\ndown, what aren’t there yet. Or driving for Cobb’s on the run
\nup from Tamworth – Thunderbolt at the top of Hungry Hill,
\nand I give him a wink. I wouldn’t wait long, Fred,
\nnot if I was you. The troopers are just behind,
\ncoming for that job at the Hillgrove. He went like a luny,
\nhim on his big black horse.
\nOh, they slide and they vanish
\nas he shuffles the years like a pack of conjuror’s cards.
\nTrue or not, it’s all the same; and the frost on the roof
\ncracks like a whip, and the back-log break into ash.
\nWake, old man. this is winter, and the yarns are over.
\nNo-one is listening
\nSouth of my days’ circle.
\nI know it dark against the stars, the high lean country
\nfull of old stories that still go walking in my sleep.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s poem is by Judith Wright (1915-2000), an Australian poet whose childhood was spent in the Northern Tablelands of New South Wales, and who then spent most of her married life in Mount Tamborine, in south east Queensland (just west of the Gold Coast), moving later to Braidwood, in the Southern Tablelands of NSW (east of Canberra).   To always […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","p1","y2008","m11","d27","h18"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10402,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions\/10402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}