Dorothy Hewett Poems

The dark fires shall burn in many rooms;
will they sometimes miss me with my tangled hair—
still girls in dark uniforms
crouching in winter with their cold hands trembling,
...

I am not alone ... in the beating of my heart
Are the songs of Lumumba, the poems of Pablo Neruda.
‘The Rail Splitters Awake' in my heart each morning,
Brecht's lost children wander through the Polish snow,
...

It rained in Sydney all next day,
And all I could hear was the sound of the baby crying
In the room next door, the key in the lock saying:
Come in, we are transient, and we have taken up our bed already
...

Once I rode with Clancy through the wet hills of Wickepin,
By Kunjin and Corrigin with moonlight on the roofs,
And the iron shone faint and ghostly on the lonely moonlit siding
And the salt earth rang like crystal underneath our flying hoofs.
...

My father's spade
has the hollow sound of regret
Goodbye Dad but he doesn't look up
where the cannas once grew by the drain
...

Here they come the clever ladies
in their detachable Peter Pan collars
their fringes their sober mein
hiding such anger such
...

unfurling our Japanese parasols
out in the desert
we arrange our dolls' tea set
on an upturned butter box
...