As you casually entered the gompa
—travel weary, a meagre warmth in you
too much mist in the lungs—
the winter sun hit the sutras.
The mountain light, having raised the black frost
shafted the night wind south
raided the cave
struck the west wall.
The ten thousand leaves slept in their boxes.
Their hundred thousand sounds
were wrapped in saffron.
The scrolls were as separate as toffees.
Then, with the wall as good as on fire
and every box glowing like an old coal
you could hear the seed syllables
crackling away inside you.
– Darjeeling 2005
Barry Hill is a distinguished Australian writer in several genres. He has won Premier’s Awards for poetry, history, non-fiction and the essay, and in 2009 was short-listed for the Melbourne Prize for Literature. His fiction has been widely anthologized, he has written extensively for radio, and his first libretto, ‘Love Strong as Death,’ was performed at the Studio, at the Sydney Opera House in 2002. He is possibly best known for his monumental, multi-award winner, Broken Song: TGH Strehlow and Aboriginal Possession (Knopf 2002)— ‘one of the great Australian books,’ (Professor John Mulvaney) and ‘a landmark event in the history of Australian high culture.’ (Professor Robert Manne). His poetry regularly appears in the annual editions of The Best Australian Poems. Of his most recent books of poems, As We Draw Ourselves, was short-listed for the 2008 Victorian Premier’s Awards, and Necessity: Poems 1996-2006 won the Australian Capital Territory’s 2008 Judith Wright Prize. Between 1998 and 2008, he was Poetry Editor of The Australian. He has recently completed a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Melbourne. He has been writing full-time since 1975, and lives by the sea in Queenscliff, southern Australia, with his wife, the singer-songwriter, Rose Bygrave.
