Bard
by darcy Friday, Aug 23 2019, 1:47am
international /
poetry /
post
old world european bards
that entertained villagers
spreading lyric propaganda
plucking the gut strings of lutes
are not finished today
in foreign lands untamed
below the southern cross
poets scratch their verse
on scraps of paper illuminated
by eucalypt campfires
describing a red and seared interior
saturated with its own peculiar splendour
all the while drawing on the same font
of inspiration that bards knew so well
nothing in that sense has changed since the
first human scrawled an image in a cave
to magically capture by representation
an object of desire or need
all the printed histories do not reveal
what a single spray-stenciled handprint reveals
under a rocky overhang -
a human hand merging with the land
none of our modern words could hope to
explain one man's stenciled hand and all it entails,
this land/hand are inseperable breaching time
and recording history as it is
as I scratch it all down in
the errie quiet of the interior
where timeless whispers are easily heard
between the pops, crackling fire
and floating scented smoke
of Australia
