Poetry By Bill Mollison
I have given you what I know
And helped you to build and plant.
If you go forward together in this way
Nations and kingdoms will become irrelevant.
For you will create your own nation.
Which, if it is valid, will cover the world.
And in which there are neither kings nor gods.
As dawn comes up, the 'couta start to fly
Old Jack, old sail, old leather neck and eye
Dips in his pole
And rainbows makes
For Friday men to fry
Will waters roll for ever over Rasselas
Where Ernie, ponderous as stone
Stared down the golden vale of buttongrass
And winds whip storms above his weathered home
Where friend coo-eed to friend, to make the echoes ring
From range to range
The speckled trout, cold Englishmen, will nose
Under the cherries when the moon is high
And eels entwine in cold embrace
Where bees sang promises of summer mead.
Burghers in solitude,
Brown-clad in townscapes
Of evening streets
Wrapped and burlapped
Against the cold; or
Asleep in their pale plump beds
One finger warm
in the hole of comfort
One foot of pink and blue
out in the cold
On the high plains
The winds forever blow
And the forms of men grow dim
In driving snow
One falls, and in icy sedges lies
Where ice, like a summer sleep
Closes his eyes.
