Samuel Wagan Watson Poems

Sprinkled in the happy dark of my mind
Is early childhood and black humour
White stucco dreaming
...

"the journey IS the destination"
a quote from a great traveller
Brisbane is a small city, but that's OK . . . 'cause I don't need much room to move . .
...

He had L O V E tattooed across his clenched right fist, followed by P O E M, etched in a vagabond's quill, across the other LOVE POEM. And with these fists coming at you in unison, you copped a taste of his, LOVE POEM. He stalked the crooked lines of this world,
...

He had rough hands
street hands
black hands
hands

that reached out
and felt the dark places

but
feeling the dark places
He would always return
with something in his face
his face that held abuse
served in an irrational way by society
the material society
a society existent on the dark places

the dark places
places that could not harness him
but only create temporary peace with him
for so many moments
He destroyed the dark places' grasp

and finally
He danced up a wind
and mocked the dark places
until He laid silent,
waiting…

for when the brolga met his breath
inviting his dance to join hers
when,
once again
He felt the dance of the young
...

Er hatte raue hände
straßenhände
schwarze hände
hände

die sich reckten
und die dunklen orte spürten

aber
wie Er die dunklen orte spürte
kehrte Er immer zurück
mit etwas im gesicht
seinem gesicht das mißbrauch enthielt
unvernünftig bedient von der gesellschaft
der materiellen gesellschaft
einer gesellschaft, die sich an dunklen orten nährt

die dunklen orte
dunkle orte, die ihn nicht zu zügeln vermochten
sondern nur vorübergehend frieden mit ihm schließen konnten
für so viele augenblicke
zerstörte Er der dunkeln orte umklammerung

und zuletzt
tanzte Er einen wind herbei
und verspottete die dunklen orte
bis Er still dalag,
wartete…

denn als das brolgaweibchen auf seinen atem traf
seinen tanz einlud, sich dem seinen anzuschließen
als,
Er noch einmal
den tanz der jugend spürte

Übersetzt von Raphael Urweider
...

My brothers once showed me the bounty that could be had in bait nets / we were able to catch garfish / bills like half-baked marlin / the rounded quill with a fluorescent orange head; pencil fish, that's what the old diggers called them,
...

Midnight's boxer He has become
That the ghosts from the ‘tents' of long-ago pay homage
Memories that fill a boarding-house room,
Busted knuckles soothed endlessly with goanna oil
...

For Rhan . . . wherever you are, Brother, I pray your path is a good one and without crossroads . . .
It was a dark and stormy night of clichés! The rain coming down, drowning the shadows, and my motley crew, well, that hotel room just couldn't hold us.
...

It's the Lucky Country's closet; a dark interior with frontier skeletons. Whirly-winds run rampant, spawning red-sand mandalas of chaos. These frenetic twisters find easy prey on ochre-kissed Dorothys, carrying them off to Parallel Oz. In Parallel Oz,
...

I can't sleep here, on this Wiradjuri land; upon this hill of learning. Awake until the sun comes up and the morose voices subside; the dawn light blades whispers back into the creases of scarred country. I can't sleep here, in the writers centre;
...