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'My Country' by Dorothea Mackellar
The love of field and coppice
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies
I know, but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me!
The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil.
Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady soaking rain.
Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze
An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand
though Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.
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'My Detention Centre' by Evak U. Ated
A love of rich green parklands
Of lands that have no gates
Of rights, love and reverence
The range sure looks great.
A keen love of city pathways
Her farms and running trails
I long to be with her
But my place is in her gaol.
I hate my detention centre
Place of transferred refugees
Of Afghans and of Kurds,
The Czechs and Sudanese.
I hate her barbed-wire fences;
Her very locality;
Her distance from urban land.
This lock-up's no home for me.
The hot air of savanna
Blows dust into my room.
Where's my wife and children?
I hope to kiss them soon.
The emptiness enfolds me.
In this I do confide:
At night as they're resting
I plan on suicide.
Do you see, cranky Howard
As you refuse to let me try?
And when, sick of it around us,
I spy grand Afghans die.
And when government is sitting
And one talks before the throng
Who'll heed us, Mr Howard?
Who'll talk of all the wrong?
Who'll stand at the table
As black winter chills do flow?
Who'll remember all the horror
As we stapled our mouths closed?
Don't offend me, Mr Howard
With "She'll be right." so gruff
Watch what has happened
Can you see my grave life's tough?
And to surly Amanda Vanstone
You nod with ever cold regard
And you, Mr John Howard
In your Kirribilli yard.
You govern streets of your town
And you brazenly stand by.
As you drink to your country
At this lodging I might die.
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