A solid pack around his grave.
Good steel to a magnet, the sky leaden
with the warmth, somehow, of common ground.
I did not know them all
but the bulk of them knew me. Their leader
told them of his bookish son
and of his grand children gathered, see—
near my elbow on the lava plain
on the hard crust of the Flats
near thistles, stone walls, Carbon Black
and the cracker’s flame leaping
where the cranes once flew
over a lad’s lizard-hunting days.
That was the time of solid stories,
of organizing rather than mourning.
This group, with family in it, is resolution.
I remember stupidly thinking, ‘the clay’s so
sticky no union man could turn in it.’
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.
