Poem First Read On January 26th 2011 At The Sydney Opera House Songtext
Neil Gaiman
von Signs of Life
Poem First Read On January 26th 2011 At The Sydney Opera House Songtext
We killed them all when we came here
The people came and burned their land
The forests where they used to feed
We burned the trees that gave them shade
And burned to bush, to scrub, to heath
We made it easier to hunt
We changed the land, and they were gone
Today our beasts and dreams are small
As species fall to time and us
The people came and burned their land
The forests where they used to feed
We burned the trees that gave them shade
And burned to bush, to scrub, to heath
We made it easier to hunt
We changed the land, and they were gone
Today our beasts and dreams are small
As species fall to time and us
But back before the black folk came
Before the white folk's fleet arrived
Before we built our cities here
Before the casual genocide
This was the land where nightmares loped
And hopped and ran and crawled and slid
And then we did the things we did
And thus we died the things we died
We have not seen Diprotodon
A wombat bigger than a room
Or run from Dromornithidae
Gigantic demon ducks of doom
All motor legs and ripping beaks
A flock of geese from hell's dark maw
We've lost carnivorous kangaroo
A bouncy furrier T-Rex
And Thylacoleo Carnifex
The rat-king-devil-lion-thing
The dropbear fantasy made flesh Quinkana, the land crocodile
Five metres long and fast as fright
Wonambi, the enormous snake
Who waited by the water-holes
And took the ones who came to drink
Who were not watchful, clever, bright
Our Thylacines were tiger-wolves
Until we drove them off the map
Then Megalania: seven meters
Of venomous enormous lizard
And more, and more
The ones whose bones we've never seen
The megafauna haunt our dreams
This was their land before mankind
Just fifty thousand years ago
Time is a beast that eats and eats
Gives nothing back but ash and bones
And one day someone else will come
To excavate a heap of stones
And wonder, "What were people like?"
Their teeth weren't sharp
Their feet were slow
They walked Australia long ago
Before Time took them into tales
We're transients. The land remains
Until its outlines wash away
While night falls down like dropbears don't
To swallow up Australia Day
Before the white folk's fleet arrived
Before we built our cities here
Before the casual genocide
This was the land where nightmares loped
And hopped and ran and crawled and slid
And then we did the things we did
And thus we died the things we died
We have not seen Diprotodon
A wombat bigger than a room
Or run from Dromornithidae
Gigantic demon ducks of doom
All motor legs and ripping beaks
A flock of geese from hell's dark maw
We've lost carnivorous kangaroo
A bouncy furrier T-Rex
And Thylacoleo Carnifex
The rat-king-devil-lion-thing
The dropbear fantasy made flesh Quinkana, the land crocodile
Five metres long and fast as fright
Wonambi, the enormous snake
Who waited by the water-holes
And took the ones who came to drink
Who were not watchful, clever, bright
Our Thylacines were tiger-wolves
Until we drove them off the map
Then Megalania: seven meters
Of venomous enormous lizard
And more, and more
The ones whose bones we've never seen
The megafauna haunt our dreams
This was their land before mankind
Just fifty thousand years ago
Time is a beast that eats and eats
Gives nothing back but ash and bones
And one day someone else will come
To excavate a heap of stones
And wonder, "What were people like?"
Their teeth weren't sharp
Their feet were slow
They walked Australia long ago
Before Time took them into tales
We're transients. The land remains
Until its outlines wash away
While night falls down like dropbears don't
To swallow up Australia Day
