Vonda Stanley's collection of early Australian bush poems

 

When the Ladies Come to the Shearing Shed

'The ladies are coming,' the super says

To the shearers sweltering there,

And 'the ladies' means in the shearing-shed:

'Don't cut 'em too bad.  Don't swear.'

The ghost of a pause in the shed's rough heart,
And lower is bowed each head;

And nothing is heard, save a whispered word,

And the roar of the hearing-shed.

The tall, shy rouser has lost his wits,

And his limbs are all astray;

He leaves a fleece on the shearing-board,

And his broom in the shearer's way.

There's a curse in store for that jackaroo

As down by the wall he slants -

And the ringer bends with his legs askew

And wishes he'd patched his pants.

They are girls from the city.  (Our hearts rebel

As we squint at their dainty feet.)

And they gush and say in a girly way

That 'the dear little lambs are sweet'.

And Bill, the ringer, who'd scorned the use

Of a childish word like 'damn',

Would give a pound that his tongue was loose

As he tackles a lively lamb.

Swift thoughts of towns in coastal towns -

Or rivers and waving grass -

And a weight on our hearts that we cannon define

That comes as the ladies pass.

But the rouser ventures a nervous dig

In the ribs of the next to him:

And Barcoo says to his pen-mate: 'Twig

The style of the last un, Jim."

Jim Moonlight gives her a careless glance -

Then he catches his breath with pain -

His strong hand shakes and the sunlights dance

As he bends to his work again.

But he's well disguised in a bristling beard,

Bronzed skin, and his shearers dress;

And whatever Jim Moonlight hoped or feared

Were hard for his mates to guess.

Jim Moonlight, wiping his broad, white brow,

Explains, with a doleful smile:

'A stitch in the side.' and he's all right now' -

And he leans on the beam a while.

And gazes out in the blazing noon

On the clearing, brown and bare -

She has come and gone, like a breath of June,

In December's heat and glare.

The bushmen are big rough boys at heart,

With hearts of a larger growth;

But they hide those hearts with a brutal jest,

And the pain with a reckless oath.

Though Bills and Jims of the bush-bard sing

Of their life loves, lost or dead.

The love of a girl is a sacred thing

Not voiced in a shearing shed.