Vonda Stanley's collection of early Australian bush poems

 

 

MUNICIPAL GUM

 

Gumtree in the city street,

Hard bitumen around your feet,

Rather you should be

In the cool world of leafy forest halls

And wild bird calls.

Here you seem to me

Like the poor cart-horse

Castrated, broken, a thing wronged,

Strapped and buckled, its hell prolonged,

Whose hung head and listless mien express

Its hopelessness.

Minicipal gum, it is dolorous

To see you thus

Set in your black grass of bitumen;

O fellow citizen,

What have then done to us?

Kath Walker,

Born 1920, is an Aboriginal poet and vigorous spokeswoman for her people.

 

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