ABOUT SINGING
An unsung land is a dead land
Forget the song
And the land will surely die.
Our forebears, though mostly illiterate,
Made music that can still make us cry
Musical phrases, like a map reference,
And the land read as a musical score
Where singing the land
Has the crowd calling out for more.
The song couplets stretch across tectonic plates
Just like mountains stretch across continents
And someone waving as we pass through endless gates.
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Pale sand, red rock, burning fire
Everything your heart may desire
Mapping the music
to which everything transcends
This is where the story begins not ends.
Religion, pagan or Christian
Permeating everything, blending,
People sympathetic and synthetic,
Careless and unknowing of secular beginning
Or religious ending.
All the colours of the rainbow
Dressed in human clothing
Aisling, dreang, radharc
And the gift of seeing what isn’t there
When the songs are left unsung
Who is then left to care?
ABORIGINE
THE SONGLINES
SONGLINES
Labyrinth of impossible pathways
Meandering across Australia
Singing the Aborigines home
Singing out the names of every
Bird, bee and tree
Singing rook and river
Singing you and me
Singing all the world
Into being.
A dreaming track
A path across the land
Or sometimes the sky
Creator-Beings dreaming
Songs, stories, dances, paintings
Petrosomatoglyphs on the land
Leaving huge footprints behind
Navigating vast distances
Through the parched interior
Language no barrier
Melodic contours in song
Passing over the land
Rhythmically beating out the jives
Where the spirits of unborn children
Sing to keep the land alive
Chatwin tells us how it was
The songlines stretching across the eons
People singing their lives into existence
Following signs their ancestors
Had tuned to perfection.
Their roads invisible to us
No traces we could follow
No marks we could discern
No bulldozer dented this terrain
No tarmac spread for others gain
No buildings stacked with pure disdain
To leave wrecked nature in their wake
The lines were left to all for free
If our blinkered eyes could only see.
Yarralin, Walujapi
Black-Headed Python
Rainbow Serpent
Native Cat Dreaming
Arranda, Kaititja, Kukaja
Unmatjera, Ilpara
Ley-di-ley-di-ley
Long lines
Ley-di-ley-di-ley
Songlines
My Writing Life 