My country by Dorothea Mackeller
The love of field and coppice
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies
I know, but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of rugged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me!
The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil.
Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady soaking rain.
Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze…
An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand
though Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.
後記：頭一次聽到這首詩是幾天以前。我們一行十來個人為慶祝一對金童玉女即將舉行的婚禮，在Santa Barbara給新郎舉行bachelor party，比較低調，在酒吧裏喝酒聊天而已。同行的一位aussie卻是個很有趣也很瘋狂的人，在British bar 裏麵把大家組織起來喊aussie揚威立萬兒的口號(雖然我們實在算得上聯合國軍)，結果召得一大群英國酒鬼加球迷高唱曼聯的隊歌，我們隻好落荒而逃。盡管落敗，卻引來了一位自稱是A&E台的記者給大家攝影。這位澳洲老兄還不過癮，又自告奮勇朗誦一首澳洲舊詩，就是上麵這首my country。他倒是很有表演才能，操著極濃重卻也很好玩的澳大利亞口音，滿含深情，聽起來既優美又憂傷，鄉愁啊.....我應該唱一首“我的中國心”，不過當時喝的還不夠多:)
