Rivers and Mountains

Yarra and Murray,
Murrumbidgee and Darling,
Lachlan and Derwent,
Swan River and Hawkesbury River . . .
By your old or your new names;
And all your brothers and sisters,
Numberless rivers, creeks, and billabongs
What can you not all tell me
Of the days gone by?

Do not your waters,
Yellow and crimson in the dawn,
Whisper, whisper round your banks?
And cannot I pry out the age-old secrets
That they whisper?

Secrets of
The days gone by —
Of blacks’ camp
And coo-ee cry.

Do not your gumtrees,
Ringed with the marks of many floods,
Seared and blackened by many fires,
Fling grotesque shadows on your waters?
And cannot I read
Those strange hieroglyphs?

They are wed so with the movement of the water
And the movement of the trees,
And with the sound of the water,
With wind-ripples and reed-ripples,
And with the patient sound
Of the wind in the trees,
And with the quiet drifting
Of leaves and bark
On the surface of the water.
What do they spell,
Those strange hieroglyphs?

Secrets of
The days gone by —
Of blacks’ camp
And coo-ee cry.

II

All you ranges,
Blue Mountains, Dandenongs, Plenty,
Flinders, Barossa, MacDonnell,
By your old or your new names,
And all your numberless brothers and sisters,
Ranges and ridges, cuestas and monadnocks,
Fertile and beckoning or craggy and forbidding,
What can you not all tell me
Of the days gone by?

Know you not the secrets of the totems?
Are you not great ancestors yourselves,
Or, some of you —
Like the furrow of Ilbumeraka —
Dragged and scooped and tortured from the plains
By the swishing tnatantja?
Were not some of you
Formed by the writhings of a hideous snake,
Like that of Emianga,
Or made as by the digging of Lukara
Among the roots of the acacias
For the prized and juicy tjameta worms?

When dawn is kindling along your crests,
Or when your flames die into darkness,
Or while you stand boldly or cloud-hidden
Through the main time of daylight,
You still have your secrets about you,
And shall have ever.

Secrets of
The days gone by —
Of blacks’ camp
And coo-ee cry.