Giles Watson's poetry and prose
Pied Roller
Pied Roller
The harvest failed that first season,
and we had no ploughs. We staved
away the scurvy with wild-spinach
and leaves of sweet tea, stripped
from creepers, tasting of liquorice.
The guns stayed unused, for want
of powder, so we thinned to bone
on a white monotony of fish, and
would have risked a hanging for
salt beef, with the maggots brushed
from it. And when the Sirius left,
the flour ration down by a pound,
the weakness came to grip us,
yet each day on the old stump,
the Pied Roller butchered a lizard
with his black tipped bill, shared it
with his mate, stringing out innards
between them, then sat upright,
bobbed heads, and began to sing.
He always started first, and she
chimed in, with a sudden soaring
from bass to treble: versicle and
response, a crisp litany of flutes
and whistles. Between each phrase
the silence swelled, as our empty
bellies echoed with hymns
of loving birds.
Poem by Giles Watson, 2014. Picture: NM, Volume 19. Judging by its size and features, the bird depicted is the Pied Butcherbird, Cracticus nigrogularis, a songster of particular note, closely related to the Australian Magpie. The poem is set in Sydney in the summer of 1788-9, after Governor Phillip had sent the ship Sirius on a rushed voyage to Cape Town in order to stave off famine. The ship did not return until May 1789.
Pied Roller
Pied Roller
The harvest failed that first season,
and we had no ploughs. We staved
away the scurvy with wild-spinach
and leaves of sweet tea, stripped
from creepers, tasting of liquorice.
The guns stayed unused, for want
of powder, so we thinned to bone
on a white monotony of fish, and
would have risked a hanging for
salt beef, with the maggots brushed
from it. And when the Sirius left,
the flour ration down by a pound,
the weakness came to grip us,
yet each day on the old stump,
the Pied Roller butchered a lizard
with his black tipped bill, shared it
with his mate, stringing out innards
between them, then sat upright,
bobbed heads, and began to sing.
He always started first, and she
chimed in, with a sudden soaring
from bass to treble: versicle and
response, a crisp litany of flutes
and whistles. Between each phrase
the silence swelled, as our empty
bellies echoed with hymns
of loving birds.
Poem by Giles Watson, 2014. Picture: NM, Volume 19. Judging by its size and features, the bird depicted is the Pied Butcherbird, Cracticus nigrogularis, a songster of particular note, closely related to the Australian Magpie. The poem is set in Sydney in the summer of 1788-9, after Governor Phillip had sent the ship Sirius on a rushed voyage to Cape Town in order to stave off famine. The ship did not return until May 1789.