(header photographs by Harry Waite 1912-2011)

The Myth of the Sacred Brumby

Contents

Contacts

Roland Robinson
from "Sing with the Wind"
Published by Envirobook 1989

Communion

Listening, I lie and hear the min come on,
steadily falling through the dark and cold:
it seemed far in a forest I had gone,
I made no sound upon the deep leaf-mould
all round that forest rose sheer mountain walls,
day long I'd walked to reach that camping place,
hearing the sound of streams and waterfalls;
I stopped with the last sunlight on my face.
I stood and listened in that forest deep,
hearing the rain, the drip drip of the trees;
from this dark room communion now I keep:
there are no comrades as such thoughts as these.
Roland Robinson
"Beyond the Grass Tree Spears"
1944 (First Published in "The Bulletin")

Solicitation

Break out of me my verse as the tea-tree in blossom
Waving from the scrub before the sea. And come
As the crimson bottle-brush among the distances
Of swamp-grass and rock and scrub; as the cold breath
Comes from the ruffled sea, tossing the casuarinas
The swamp-grass and the yellow broom. And have in you
The dark sea my brother brimming with rain beyond
The sandhills and sword-grass. Have in you slanting rain
Through the down-hanging leaves of the eucalypts; rain
On my tent, and night and smell of the earth, and sound
Of the gathering rain. And have in you the silences
Of stars appearing over the bush and the sea.
Roland Robinson
"Beyond the Grass Tree Spears"
1944