Poems by Edward Dyson

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A Thermometrical Ballade

There’s a wind up that licks like a flame,

And the sun is a porthole of hell.

Now evanish prim notions of shame,

And the craving to look rather well –

In pyjamas you’re never a swell,

And you’ve chosen some roomily made.

Oh! for ices these pangs to dispel –

It’s one hundred and nine in the shade!

123

by Edward Dyson

As The Troops Went Through

I heard this day, as I may no more,

The world's heart throb at my workshop door.

The sun was keen, and the day was still;

The township drowsed in, a haze of heat.

A stir far off on the sleepy hill,

The measured beat of their buoyant feet,

And the lilt and thrum

Of a little drum,

170

by Edward Dyson

Battle Passes

A quaint old gabled cottage sleeps be-

tween the raving hills.

To right and left are livid strife, but on the

deep, wide sills

The purple pot-flowers swell and glow, and

o'er the walls and eaves

Prinked creeper steals caressing hands, the

poplar drips its leaves.

121

by Edward Dyson

BillJim

Down to it is Plugger Bill,

Lyin' crumpled, white 'n' still.

Me 'n' him

Chips in when the scrap begins,

Carin' nothin' for our skins,

Chi-iked as the 'Eavenly Twins-

Bill 'n' Jim.

They 'ave outed Bill at last,

116

by Edward Dyson

Bullets

As bullets come to us they're thin,

They're angular, or smooth and fat,

Some spiral are, and gimlet in,

And some are sharp, and others flat.

The slim one pink you clean and neat,

The flat ones bat a solid blow

Much as a camel throws his feet,

And leave you beastly incomplete.

134

by Edward Dyson

Joey’s Job

In days before the trouble Jo was rated as

a slob.

He chose to sit in hourly expectation of a job.

He'd loop hisself upon a post, for seldom

friends had he,

A gift of patient waitin' his distinctif quality.

He'd linger in a doorway, or he'd loiter on the

grass,

128

by Edward Dyson

Bashful Gleeson

FROM HER HOME beyond the river in the parting of the hills,

Where the wattles fleecy blossom surged and scattered in the breeze,

And the tender creepers twined about the chimneys and the sills,

And the garden flamed with colour like an Eden through the trees,

She would come along the gully, where the ferns grew golden fair,

In the stillness of the morning, like the spirit of the place,

With the sunshafts caught and woven in the meshes of her hair,

And the pink and white of heathbloom sweetly blended in her face.

117

by Edward Dyson

Jonah’s Luck

OUT OF LUCK, mate? Have a liquor. Hang it, where’s the use complaining?

Take your fancy, I’m in funds now—I can stand the racket, Dan.

Dump your bluey in the corner; camp here for the night, it’s raining;

Bet your life I’m glad to see you—glad to see a Daylesford man.

Swell? Correct, Dan. Spot the get up; and I own this blooming shanty,

Me the fellows christened ‘Jonah’ at Jim Crow and Blanket Flat,

’Cause my luck was so infernal—you remember me and Canty?

Rough times, those—the very memory keeps a chap from getting fat.

113

by Edward Dyson

The Auction

"Who'll bid? Who'll bid?" the question rang

Where throned Death was calling.

I seemed to sense his charnel tang,

Mephitic air appalling;

And every tick I heard the clang

Of his steel hammer falling.

Come great men who upon our earth

Had held a lofty mission,

131

by Edward Dyson

Bricks

Dear Ned, I now take up my pen to write

you these few lines,

And hopin' how they find you fit. Gorbli',

it seems an age

Since Jumbo ducked the Port, 'n' drilled 'n'

polished to the nines,

He walked his pork on Collins like a hero off

the stage,

by Edward Dyson

In Hospital

It is thirty moons since I slung me hook

From the job at the hay and corn,

Took me solemn oath, 'n' I straight forsook

All the ways of life, dinkum ways 'n' crook,

'N' the things on which it was good to look

Since the day when a bloke was born.

I was give a gun, 'n' a bay'net bright,

'N' a 'ell of a swag iv work,

by Edward Dyson

In Town

OUT of work and out of money—out of friends that means, you bet—

Out of firewood, togs and tucker, out of everything but debt—

And I loathe the barren pavements, and the crowds a fellow meets,

And the maddening repetition of the suffocating streets.

With their stinks my soul is tainted, and the tang is on my tongue

Of that sour and smoky suburb and the push we’re thrown among,

And I sicken at the corners polished free of paint and mirk

By the shoulders of the men who’re always hanging round for work.

103

by Edward Dyson