Judith Wright Poems

The song is gone; the dance
is secret with the dancers in the earth,
the ritual useless, and the tribal story
lost in an alien tale.
...

We meet and part now over all the world;
we, the lost company,
take hands together in the night, forget
the night in our brief happiness, silently.
...

The day was clear as fire,
the birds sang frail as glass,
when thirsty I came to the creek
and fell by its side in the grass.
...

I saw our golden years on a black gale,
our time of love spilt in the furious dust.
'O we are winter-caught, and we must fail,'
said the dark dream, 'and time is overcast.'
...

Under the death of winter's leaves he lies
who cried to Nothing and the terrible night
to be his home and bread. 'O take from me
the weight and waterfall ceaseless Time
...

Once as I travelled through a quiet evening,
I saw a pool, jet-black and mirror-still.
Beyond, the slender paperbarks stood crowding;
each on its own white image looked its fill,
...

Glassed with cold sleep and dazzled by the moon,
out of the confused hammering dark of the train
I looked and saw under the moon's cold sheet
your delicate dry breasts, country that built my heart;
...

In the olive darkness of the sally-trees
silently moved the air from night to day.
The summer-grass was thick with honey daisies
where he, a curled god, a red Jupiter,
...

Tunnelling through the night, the trains pass
in a splendour of power, with a sound like thunder
shaking the orchards, waking
...

This is not I. I had no body once-
only what served my need to laugh and run
and stare at stars and tentatively dance
on the fringe of foam and wave and sand and sun.
...