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.

后记：头一次听到这首诗是几天以前。我们一行十来个人为庆祝一对金童玉女即将举行的婚礼，在Santa Barbara给新郎举行bachelor party，比较低调，在酒吧里喝酒聊天而已。同行的一位aussie却是个很有趣也很疯狂的人，在British bar 里面把大家组织起来喊aussie扬威立万儿的口号(虽然我们实在算得上联合国军)，结果召得一大群英国酒鬼加球迷高唱曼联的队歌，我们只好落荒而逃。尽管落败，却引来了一位自称是A&E台的记者给大家摄影。这位澳洲老兄还不过瘾，又自告奋勇朗诵一首澳洲旧诗，就是上面这首my country。他倒是很有表演才能，操着极浓重却也很好玩的澳大利亚口音，满含深情，听起来既优美又忧伤，乡愁啊.....我应该唱一首“我的中国心”，不过当时喝的还不够多:)