To Francis Webb

dreams flew out of you
birds into the sky
fear moved into you
twisting its knife
long slow days of
harsh golden light
as for your imagined explorers
a journey over broken rocks
a pilgrimage to a buried shrine
through stinging white radiance
the electric insistence of flies
your Sturt rode near-blind to his willed goal
a vision of the dead heart blossoming
and suffered the sun like stone upon his back —
light as always the heaviest world to bear
dreading, hungering for, the final loneliness
Leichhardt tracked its wastes with animal cunning
threatening the void with Übermensch rage;
at the end, Australia, the great mind of loneliness
itself, bared and embraced his bones
Eyre endured all, accepted all, but felt at last
only how the sand abrased, blistered his spirit
wire twists of scrub scalded his hands
dry hot winds tearing a man from his courage —
that final drop of moisture quivering on parched lips
so each footstep was a desert, a desert each footstep:
and what could be the journey's meaning then?
the journey became a question, with only a question mark
at its end
with heart and hand you traced these maps
touched and tested all burdens, lived their journeys
from within, made words into landscapes of myth
alive with the voiceless songs of wandering men
and always you heard the rhythmic pulsing
of that inland sea, the oceanic roar surging inside
the shell: prophecies, to burning visionary minds,
of healing waters at the end of search