Australia Poem by John a'Beckett

Out of the icicled window
of a cramped, crowded winter bus,
silver sun racing slick into gold, backing off
from the sighed frost, breath of my Slavic passengers;

Out of the close cold of the half-dark, the strange formation
of the snow's dream in its old exhaustion, its eventual sleep...

Into a distance too full to embrace destination, ever-wanting
in the largesse of her loveliness, to be more destiny than a nation
a warm country comes to me that I know to be rambling
rolling if only half-real Australia

In a blaze of gala-galactic wattle,
scarlet blast of Banksia, broad rash blush of azalia
not growing in strict fields as here, but appearing
sporadic, eccentric, locality-less, Nature’s invitation
to the long littoral beach of her whole hospitality.

In a shift of the mind's eye from the constant moment;
bouquet of scattered, random remarks, comments made
at the moment where the heart is let free to feel.

Out of a strange multitude, company to my solitude, molded
from an old fault in geology, here my country comes,
swaggers up to me, glorious old chronological failure
blessed and rolling if only half-real Australia