The world will change to that which forgets you and your enthusiasms will be as a passing fashion. In this you come to understand the nature of illusion
and the hoped for expectations of youth, a too well-travelled dream. Here where life recedes further into distance
you will know yourself as unmanned.
Braidwood
for Judith Wright
Granite & quartz country, once gold rush, now cattle tread amongst
the white hawthorn and yellow broom; from Captains Flat to Majors Creek
the creek-beds cut the empty vein.
Hail or heat, the hanged ghost of Thomas Braidwood rolls out his
oaths big as boulders upon the town: dust, poverty, despair, drunkenness