Judith Wright
Lyrebirds
Over the west side of the mountain,
that’s lyrebird country.
I could go down there, they say, in the early morning,
and I’d see them, I’d hear them.
Ten years, and I have never gone.
I’ll never go.
I’ll never see the lyrebirds —
the few, the shy, the fabulous,
the dying poets.
I should see them, if I lay there in the dew;
first a single movement,
like a waterdrop falling, then stillness;
then a brown head, brown eyes,
a splendid bird, bearing
like a crest the symbol of his art,
the high symmetrical shape of the perfect lyre.
I should hear that master practising his art.
No, I have never gone.
Some things ought to be kept secret, alone;
some things — birds like walking fables —
ought to inhabit nowhere but the reverence of the heart.
Page(s) 9
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