IN the northern
hemisphere
Life
seems to leap at the air, or skim under the wind
Like stags on rocky ground, or
pawing horses, or springy
scut-tailed
rabbits.
Or else rush horizontal to charge at
the sky’s horizon,
Like bulls or bisons or wild pigs.
Or slip like water slippery towards
its ends,
As foxes,
stoats, and wolves, and prairie dogs.
Only mice, and moles, and rats, and
badgers, and beavers,
and perhaps
bears
Seem
belly-plumbed to the earth’s mid-navel.
Or frogs that when they leap
come flop, and flop to the
centre of the
earth.
But the yellow antipodal Kangaroo,
when she sits up,
Who can unseat her, like a liquid drop that is heavy,
and
just touches
earth.
The downward drip.
The down-urge.
So much denser than
cold-blooded frogs.
Delicate mother Kangaroo
Sitting up there rabbit-wise,
but huge, plumb-weighted,
And lifting her beautiful slender face, oh! so
much more
gently and finely lined than a rabbit’s,
or than a hare’s,
Lifting her face to nibble at a round white peppermint
drop,
which she loves, sensitive mother
Kangaroo.
Her sensitive, long, pure-bred
face.
Her full
antipodal eyes, so dark,
So big and quiet and remote, having watched so
many empty
dawns in silent
Australia.
Her little loose hands, and drooping
Victorian shoulders.
And then her great weight below the waist, her vast pale
belly
With a thin
young yellow little paw hanging out, and
straggle of a long thin ear, like ribbon,
Like a funny trimming to the
middle of her belly, thin little
dangle of an immature
paw, and one thin ear.
Her belly, her big
haunches
And in
addition, the great muscular python-stretch of
her
tail.
There, she shan’t have any more
peppermint drops.
So
she wistfully, sensitively sniffs the air, and then
turns,
goes off in slow sad
leaps
On the long flat skis of her
legs,
Steered and
propelled by that steel-strong snake of a
tail.
Stops again, half turns, inquisitive
to look back.
While
something stirs quickly in her belly, and a lean little
face
comes out, as from a window,
Peaked and a bit dismayed,
Only to disappear again quickly
away from the sight of the
world, to snuggle down
in the warmth,
Leaving the trail of a different paw hanging
out.
Still she watches with eternal,
cocked wistfulness!
How full her eyes are, like the full, fathomless, shining
eyes
of an Australian black-boy
Who has been lost so many
centuries on the margins of
existence!
She watches with insatiable
wistfulness.
Untold
centuries of watching for something to come,
For a new signal from life, in
that silent lost land of the
South.
Where nothing bites but insects and
snakes and the sun,
small life.
Where no bull roared, no cow
ever lowed, no stag cried, no
leopard screeched, no lion coughed, no dog
barked,
But all was
silent save for parrots occasionally, in the
haunted blue bush.
Wistfully watching, with wonderful
liquid eyes.
And all
her weight, all her blood, dripping sack-wise down
towards the earth’s centre,
And the live little one taking in its paw at the
door of her
belly.
Leap then, and come down on the line
that draws to the
earth’s deep, heavy
centre.
Sydney.