This Land
This Land Give me a harsh land to wring music from, brown hills, and dust, with dead grass straw to my bricks. Give me words that are cutting-harsh as wattle-bird notes in dusty gums crying at noon. Give me a harsh land, a land that swings, like heart and blood from heat to mist. Give me the hand that like my heart scorches its flowers of spring, then floods upon its summer ardour. Give me a land where rain is rain that wold beat the heads low, where wind howls at the windows and patters dust on tin roofs while it hides the summer sun in a mud-red shirt. Give my words sun and rain desert and heat and mist spring flowers and dead grass blue sea and dusty sky. song birds and harsh cries strength and austerity that this land has. ...