We present this work in honor of the poet’s 80th birthday.

 

Hold my hand
Hand in hand
Handshake
Hand signal

Hand-some
Hand to hand-combat
Handful
Handiwork

Hands-on experience
Hand job
Pass through my hands
Rose, as in secondhand

Hands-off
Hand-over
A dab hand is at hand
I heard at third hand

Helping hand
Hands up
Heavy-handed
Hand over fist.

According to the hand book
It’s a hand made
Hand grenade
And I’ve got to hand it to you
You were just a hand’s breadth
From doing a hand stand

Give the little girl a great big hand
She’s got a hand gun
And she’s likely to use it.

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 90th birthday.

 

Dead to the world I have failed you
Forgive me, traveller.

Thirsty, I was no fountain
Hungry, I was not bread
Tired, I was no pillow

Forgive my unwritten poems:
the many I have frozen with irony
the many I have trampled with anger
the many I have rejected in self-defence
the many I have ignored in fear

unaware, blind or fearful
I ignored them.
They clamoured everywhere
those unwritten poems.
They sought me out day and night
and I turned them away.

Forgive me the colours
they might have worn
Forgive me their eclipsed faces
They dared not venture from
the unwritten lines.

Under each inert hour of my silence
died a poem, unheeded

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 100th birthday.

 

Here they come the clever ladies
in their detachable Peter Pan collars
their fringes their sober mein
hiding such anger such
subtle vices dizzying torments
how do they manage to keep it intact
that demeanour? Is it something they’ve learned?
Not from George rough-hewn or Emily
choking her mastiff down on the moors.
No it’s Jane with her simpering smile
her malice her maidenly virtues
rustling through the 20th Century seminars
sitting on platforms discussing
manner and style how to instruct
& parry impertinent questions.

We present this work in honor of Canberra Day.

 

Let others prate of Greece and Rome,
And towns where they may never be,
The muse should wander nearer home.
My country is enough for me;
Her wooded hills that watch the sea,
Her inland miles of springing corn,
At Macedon or Barrakee—
I love the land where I was born.
On Juliet smile the autumn stars
And windswept plains by Winchelsea,
In summer on their sandy bars
Her rivers loiter languidly.
Where singing waters fall and flee
The gullied ranges dip to Lorne
With musk and gum and myrtle tree—
I love the land where I was born.

The wild things in her tangles move
As blithe as fauns in Sicily,
Where Melbourne rises roof by roof
The tall ships serve her at the quay,
And hers the yoke of liberty
On stalwart shoulders lightly worn,
Where thought and speech and prayer are free—
I love the land where I was born.

Princes and lords of high degree,
Smile, and we fling you scorn for scorn,
In hope and faith and memory
I love the land where I was born.

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 175th birthday.

 

The waratah has stained her cheek,
Her lips are even brighter,
Like virgin quartz without a streak
Her teeth are, but far whiter.
Her eyes are large arid soft and dark,
And clear as running water;
And straight as any stringy bark
Is Lil, the digger’s daughter.

She’ll wash a prospect quick and well,
And deftly rise the ladle;
The weight of gold at sight she’ll tell,
And work with tub and cradle.
She was her father’s only mate,
And wound up wash and water,
She worked all day and studied late,
For all she knows he taught her.

She stood to wait the word below.
A test for woman, rather;
When I sprang to the windlass bow,
And helped her land her father,
She turned her pretty face on me
To thank me, and I thought her
The grandest girl of all her race
Sweet Lil, the digger’s daughter.

And when my luck began to change
I grew a trifle bolder,
And told my love, but it was strange
She knew before I told her.
She said that she would be my wife,
Then home I proudly brought her,
To be my loving mate for life,
But still the digger’s daughter.

We present this work in honor of Australia Day.

 

In a white gully among fungus red
Where serpent logs lay hissing at the air,
I found a kangaroo. Tall dewy,dead,
So like a woman, she lay silent there.
Her ivory hands, black-nailed, crossed on her breast
Her skin of sun and moon hues, fallen cold
her brown eyes lay like rivers come to rest
And death had made her black mouth harsh and old
Beside her in the ashes I sat deep
And mourned for her, but had no native song
To flatter death, while down the ploughlands steep
Dark young Camelli whistled loud and long,
‘Love, liberty and Italy are all.’
Broad golden was his breast against the sun
I saw his wattle whip rise high and fall
Across the slim mare’s flanks, and one by one
She drew the furrows after her as he
Flapped like a gull behind her, climbing high
Chanting his oaths and lashing soundingly,
While from the mare came once a blowing sigh.
The dew upon the kangaroo’s white side
Had melted. Time was whirling high around,
Like the thin woomera, and from heaven wide
He, the bull-roarer, made continuous sound
Incarnate lay my country by my hand:
Her long hot days, bushfires, and speaking rains
Her mornings of opal and the copper band
Of smoke around the sunlight on the plains.
Globed in fire-bodies the meat- ants ran
to taste her flesh and linked us as we lay,
Forever Australian, listening to a man
From careless Italy, swearing at our day.
When golden-lipped, the eagle-hawks came down
Hissing and whistling to eat of lovely her
And the blowflies with their shields of purple brown
Plied hatching to and fro across her fur,
I burnt her with the logs, and stood all day
Among the ashes, pressing home the flame
Till woman, logs and dreams were scorched away
And native with the night, that land from whence they came.