I’ve just read Debra Dank’s We Come with this Place, an astonishing book that I expect to blog about soon. It won four of the prizes at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards this year: you can read the judges’ comments here and here.
Today’s stanza is a versification of the first paragraph of the chapter ‘Yarned into Place’. It’s probably useful to say that the red dust of Gudanji Country is a powerful presence throughout the book.
Verse 9: From Debra Dank
'Nyamirniji ilinga jaburru'
'You listen first and then you'll know.'
The road ahead lies straight and narrow,
dictates where our car will go.
A line dug in the land by grader,
straight as pencil-rule on paper,
irons out what that land has lived
and seen: a scar. We'd be deceived
but there behind us all the swirling
waves and billows of red dust
erase that line, as breezes must,
defy geometry’s appalling
power. No straight line. All around
dust hides what hides the sacred ground.
Here’s the original prose, from page 239 of the book:
‘Nyamirniji ilinga jaburru,’ she said. ‘You listen first and then you will know.’ The road stretched ahead, an astonishing river of earth that we, travelling in a white troopie, moved along as if in a boat. As far ahead as we could see, the road continued straight. Someone had taken out a grader and dug a straight line across the landscape as easily as they would have used a ruler to draw a line on a paper map. And they built that road, so straight and flat that it ironed out all the history this country had lived and seen, leaving just that awful scarring mark. But, when we looked behind us, swirling and billowing waves of red dust obliterated the road, twisting and turning in eddies and breezes. There was not a straight line to be found anywhere.
Me fail? I fly! 