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The Gramophone

May 1936


The music moves against the canvas.
I am dancing,
my skirt could be silk
and my shoes
fine sandals.

He holds me, murmurs in my ear.
I try and remember
what it was he said,
to make me leave my green hills –
my parents.

He spoke in coloured dreams
that turned my head –
stories of nomads and deserts.

Spoke in a language that
rose and fell –
an ancient music.

It could have been Africa
we were coming to,
a more different world
I couldn’t imagine.

The gramophone
is a link
to my old life,
and here I dance with him –
my feet in thick shoes,
stepping lightly
through the dust.


Late afternoon

The late sun shines silver in the grass fields,
in the stretch of spinifex sprouting after rain.
It has the look of fertile country
but it’s not.

As the wind dips, the quiet whispers in my ears.
All the world is here
under the falling sun,
the country a gift of light and softening air.

I hear the sound of night being called in,
camels, kettles,
the fire coming to life,
the smell of evening smoke resting in the valley.

Evening cold lifts from the creek bed,
I tend to the fire, the cooking,
let the yellow light
touch my pale skin,
in the final warmth
of late afternoon.



Haircutting at Piltadi

We have stopped,
camels tethered;
their bells echo about the bush
like the memory of forest birds.

The weather being mild, we unpack;
do the washing,
and with all that we own in the world
marking our place in the sand,
we take turns at haircutting.

I do quite a style on Ted’s
and later, tidy up
the bits he missed
of mine.

The peace stretches here,
and we speak in whispers
as we spread into the desert.



Poems taken from the verse novel Journey to Piltadi – story of Bertha Strehlow’s survival and endurance in the desert.



Leni Shilton has lived in Central Australia for many years where she has worked as a lecturer, a prison educator and a bush nurse. Her work is published in journals and anthologies, most recently Women’s Work, Art Monthly, Axon and Swamp Journal. She is currently undertaking a PhD in creative writing through Southern Cross University.