This Land

Give me a harsh land to wring music from,
brown hills, and dust, with dead grass
straw to my bricks.

Give me words that are cutting-harsh
as wattle-bird notes in dusty gums
crying at noon.

Give me a harsh land, a land that
swings, like heart and blood
from heat to mist.

Give me the hand that like my heart
scorches its flowers of spring,
then floods upon its summer ardour.

Give me a land where rain
is rain that wold beat the heads low,
where wind howls at the windows

and patters dust on tin roofs
while it hides the summer sun
in a mud-red shirt.

Give my words sun and rain
desert and heat and mist
spring flowers and dead grass
blue sea and dusty sky.

song birds and harsh cries
strength and austerity
that this land has.