Home he has come from battles far away
Where he has heard Death breathing at his side,
And out-paced Fear like some swift runner who,
Labouring at first, speeds on with easy stride.
Home he has come with coloured tales to tell,
But they remain untold; fencing, he parries
Questions that fall like empty-sounding rain.
"We did our job, no more," he says, and carries
Pride in his careful voice that outlaws pain.
He is a stranger now -- a new dark man
Entrenched behind the knowledge in his eyes.
Dangers are thick between us that I could
Not share -- hot, tropic seas, relentless skies.
Rivers divide us. Look! I see him walk
Down jungle-depths where writhing roof-trees fashion
Macabre twilights starred with poisonous bloom.
Here was a lad knowing joy and hope and passion --
Now a lost thing stalking and stalked by doom!
Something is there that, was not there before.
He is transmuted by experience
Into a different clay: soft-edged is he
As yet, and vulnerable, without defence.
I speak to him -- one moment he is there
Then gone away (his haunted eyes all hollow,
His memory linked with old, remembered, pain)
Into some, fastness where I cannot follow.
He will not be entirely mine again.
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 1 May 1943
