Judith Wright

Here is a poem by Judith Wright (May 31, 1915 – June 25, 2000), Australian poet, environmentalist and campaigner for Aboriginal land rights.

This Time Alone

Here still, the mountain that we climbed
when hand in hand my love and I
first looked through one another’s eyes
and found the world that does not die.

Wild fuchsia flowered white and red,
the mintbush opened to a bee.
Stars circled round us where we lay
and dawn came naked from the sea.

Its holy ordinary light
welled up and blessed us and was blessed.
Nothing more simple, nor more strange,
than earth itself was then our rest.

I face the steep unyielding rock,
I bleed against the cockspur’s thorn,
struggling the upward path alone,
this time alone. This time alone.

I turn and set that world alight.
Unfurling from its hidden bud
it widens round me, past my sight,
filled with my breath, fed with my blood;

the sun that rises as I stand
comes up within me gold and young;
my hand is sheltered in our hand,
the bread of silence on my tongue.

--Judith Wright
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“Judith Wright: Collected Poems, Fourth Estate (1994)