Drawings by Tutama Tjapangarti
Selected Poems from Billy Marshall Stoneking's classic collection of poetry
THE VISITATION
When the Gutenburg pulled into Papunya
there was no shore to wave from.
The natives came out in bosoms.
No flowers floated on the water.
There was no water.
No orchestra played
"Nearer My God To Thee".
No one knew the passengers;
there were no old-time relatives,
no old country older.
Just a puff of whitefellas
and strange noises
beached on tribal ground
chugging out commas and semicolons,
lower cases and verbs
in anticipation
of that day: when the HOLY BIBLE
sails down the sands and
weighs anchor in some poor bastard’s
conscience.
ASSIMILATION / WESTERN DESERT / 1962-1974
I
On the first night
all the people buried their tins of meat;
it was the wrong color - it’d been dead
too long.
On the second night
- more tins. A few crazy people
swallowed the meat. They were hungry,
and the whitefella smiled.
Third night
the crazy people were still alive
so everyone started lining up
for meat - a single file.
Fourth night
a whitefella showed all those ladies
and men the key
on the bottom of the tin.
On the fifth night
all the people were opening their own.
On the sixth night
Titus took Matthew’s meat
by accident - and had his head
split open in a fight.
II
Tjakamarra says:
"Before camp pie and shoes,
before motor car and Jesus,
before missionary and baby money,
before mining company and police,
before rifle and English,
before guitar,
before card games,
before the Queen,
before pens, pencils and comic books,
before movies and rock and roll,
before blankets, before grog,
cigarettes, pills, bandages, baked beans,
telephones, chicken, and soap;
before doors and scissors,
crowbars and tooth doctors...
we ate kampurarrpa berries and kangaroo,
bush turkey, taakurtutu, witchetty grub and yiparlu.
Yipilypa! Happy! Never yawning before the hunt,
we dug cooking holes in the sand,
sitting back on our heels
while our spirits stood straight up in our bodies.
Now, all our names are written down in books,
and flour keeps the people, and tea and sugar
keep the people, and
everyone is living close to clothes."
III
This boy learned how to read
This boy learned how to write
This girl learned how to add
This person learned how to speak
This child learned how to count
This boy says ABCs up to "Q"
This child eats pencils - no breakfast
This girl says "yessir" / says "no sir"
This one lost her book
This boy is 75%
This child erases
These people have a word for this,
one word;
translated, it means:
"Oh me! How my spirit grows short!"
MARTHA
A good stick, the headmaster says.
She doesn’t drink.
She comes to work everyday.
She does her job without complaint.
Occasionally, a smile breaks
across her face
watching the children in the playground -
"Red Rover, Red Rover..."
At midday, she sits -
a shadow in the shade,
resting between the clean towels
and unmopped floors.
The camps, the children,
the fires she’s made
curl up like smoke in her eyes.
Beautiful and deep.
She carries the songs,
the secret knowledge of women,
the life of the Land
that no man sees.
And with a sharp eye
catches the crack in the earth
at the base of the wanari tree,
signpost for witchetty grub.
She knows the distances between
every sand-dune, creekbed and rockhole.
In the thickness of her soles
is the recollection of early days,
when she walked Pintupi country
and gave birth in the bush to two sons...
Only one survived.
She saved the retarded one.
She carried him for years on her hip
She has no regrets.
She remembers everything.
She knows who she is.
No one can take that away from her.
TJUNGURRAYI'S WERD BOOK
fill in the blanks:
Run ________ me
Sit ________ me
You live in
hair
Stand _______ and
Hand _______ and
and ________
Tools are kept in this _______
The tooth is
deep
The flag blows
in the pram
We will play
need & seek
a tray of
days
a roof
wall
a word that means to begin ________
(?)
More than one bone _______
More than one stone _______
More than one note ________
I have ten cents
to cry
MEMO
at the very least, uncle mallarme,
a bell,
a resistance; or
to be more local:
(smoke
around a clap stick), and
the pounding
of air
across a tongue,
a throat.
The word is worker, first -
(and then
custodian)
to make the object action:
the paint falling
from the dancer’s body,
the fire,
ticking away, making
its mulga gossip
keeping time
with the singers.
there is kinship between us
and the flames.
THE MOUNTAINS HAVEN'T MOVED
There are mountains behind my house,
big mountains; I see them from my kitchen window.
I have been watching them closely
for a long time. Today,
a letter arrived from Sydney:
a friend reminding me that soon
I will be coming back to the city.
She says I will love every minute of it;
she can hardly wait.
I wash the dishes and walk around the house.
The mountains outside my kitchen window
haven’t moved.
My son has grown three inches this year
and my wife, at twenty-seven, complains of getting old.
I tell her she is ravishing and she laughs:
“don’t be stupid.”
For four years I have watched
the hairs in my beard turning gray.
Outside my kitchen window
the mountains haven’t moved.
Jenny tells me things have changed in Sydney.
There are soup kitchens again –
first time since the Great Depression.
Everything is dirtier, noisier, but
you can still get a free meal at Hare Krishna.
In the city, all my friends are splitting up.
I haven’t seen a dentist for ages.
In the last two years I’ve put on a stone.
Today, I’m reading a book; it tells me:
“Love endures.”
Outside my window, the mountains haven’t moved.
I’ve got a skin cancer on the bridge of my nose.
The packing boxes are already stacked in the corner.
In three months I’ll be back in the city.
The windows, the buses,
the Proctor & Gamble plant,
the soapy fumes of Rozelle and Balmain,
the speaking “as a matter of course”,
the touching “as a matter of course”,
the rows of doors,
the Land Rights stickers in the windows
of the terraces and semi-detached.
For years I have traveled from one place
to another. In one year I lived
in four different houses.
I am beginning to wonder if, in my life,
I have collected more than I have thrown away…
I haven’t lived in one place longer
than I have lived here.
Outside my window, the mountains haven’t moved.
I write, I smoke, I read stories to my son.
I teach English to Aboriginal boys, and doubt
that even that will help them.
I know I have reached middle-age because
I think about death everyday.
Where does one go from the centre,
except a little closer to the edge?
The windows. The mountains.
