Gashes of gullies mock the dried creek-bed,
Gaping like wounds in ridges festered white,
Where trails of ashes scar the distant height.
All colour from the tortured bush is bled,
Save for some blistered tree's torn skin flushed red,
Or smouldering stump burning carbuncle-bright
Through the blinding smoke-haze. Limbs still alight,
Rocket a requiem for the charred dead.
The stricken earth, like a used parchment scroll
Of grass and plant and every flower effaced,
Bares to the hot west wind her blackened breast,
Red dust-clouds from the long- parched inland roll,
And, with armadas of scorched leaves enlaced,
Eerily pattern a grim palimpsest.
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 March 1945
Author reference sites: Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Old Qld Poetry
See also.
Gaping like wounds in ridges festered white,
Where trails of ashes scar the distant height.
All colour from the tortured bush is bled,
Save for some blistered tree's torn skin flushed red,
Or smouldering stump burning carbuncle-bright
Through the blinding smoke-haze. Limbs still alight,
Rocket a requiem for the charred dead.
The stricken earth, like a used parchment scroll
Of grass and plant and every flower effaced,
Bares to the hot west wind her blackened breast,
Red dust-clouds from the long- parched inland roll,
And, with armadas of scorched leaves enlaced,
Eerily pattern a grim palimpsest.
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 March 1945
Author reference sites: Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Old Qld Poetry
See also.
