A.D. Hope's

Australia

A Nation of trees, drab green and desolate grey 
In the field uniform of modern wars, 
Darkens her hills, those endless, outstretched paws 
Of Sphinx demolished or stone lion worn away. 

They call her a young country, but they lie: 
She is the last of lands, the emptiest, 
A woman beyond her change of life, a breast 
Still tender but within the womb is dry. 

Without songs, architecture, history: 
The emotions and superstitions of younger lands, 
Her rivers of water drown among inland sands, 
The river of her immense stupidity 

Floods her monotonous tribes from Cairns to Perth. 
In them at last the ultimate men arrive 
Whose boast is not: "we live" but "we survive", 
A type who will inhabit the dying earth. 

And her five cities, like five teeming sores, 
Each drains her: a vast parasite robber-state 
Where second hand Europeans pullulate 
Timidly on the edge of alien shores. 

Yet there are some like me turn gladly home 
From the lush jungle of modern thought, to find 
The Arabian desert of the human mind, 
Hoping, if still from the deserts the prophets come, 

Such savage and scarlet as no green hills dare 
Springs in that waste, some spirit which escapes 
The learned doubt, the chatter of cultured apes 
Which is called civilization over there.

A D Hope's

Crossing the Frontier

 Crossing the frontier they were stopped in time, 
Told, quite politely, they would have to wait: 
Passports in order, nothing to declare 
And surely holding hands was not a crime 
Until they saw how, ranged across the gate, 
All their most formidable friends were there. 

Wearing his conscience like a crucifix, 
Her father, rampant, nursed the Family Shame; 
And, armed with their old-fashioned dinner-gong, 
His aunt, who even when they both were six, 
Had just to glance towards a childish game 
To make them feel that they were doing wrong. 

And both their mothers, simply weeping floods, 
Her head-mistress, his boss, the parish priest, 
And the bank manager who cashed their cheques; 
The man who sold him his first rubber-goods; 
Dog Fido, from whose love-life, shameless beast, 
She first observed the basic facts of sex. 

They looked as though they had stood there for hours; 
For years - perhaps for ever. In the trees 
Two furtive birds stopped courting and flew off; 
While in the grass beside the road the flowers 
Kept up their guilty traffic with the bees. 
Nobody stirred. Nobody risked a cough. 

Nobody spoke. The minutes ticked away; 
The dog scratched idly. Then, as parson bent 
And whispered to a guard who hurried in, 
The customs-house loudspeakers with a bray 
Of raucous and triumphant argument 
Broke out the wedding march from Lohengrin. 

He switched the engine off: "We must turn back." 
She heard his voice break, though he had to shout 
Against a din that made their senses reel, 
And felt his hand, so tense in hers, go slack. 
But suddenly she laughed and said: "Get out! 
Change seatsl Be quickl" and slid behind the wheel. 

And drove the car straight at them with a harsh, 
Dry crunch that showered both with scraps and chips, 
Drove through them; barriers rising let them pass 
Drove through and on and on, with Dad's moustache 
Beside her twitching still round waxen lips 
And Mother's tears still streaming down the glass.