The
Home Songs
4.
Gunya Singing
galmalngidyalu nhal gaghaanggilinya
(the song delights me)
Gunya is the first word I remember
Pak ah Pu the gidjiman
Cunjevoi – words lands faces special
tucked inside
My grandmother, when travelling
would say“ who are your people”
On the day train down to Melbourne
we would ask the ones around us
where’s your country who’s your people
I expect you know the rest
the crossing is the telling and the moving
is the sighing is the sore bums and the
cold pies
of the strangers on the rail
A million tonne of ballast sings out a song
beneath me
a million tonne extracted from the soil of
everywhere
calling out in rocking throat
the state the state the state
all one field of grey, look closer there
where brown abuts
tan touches black upon steel blue
the Perway is one item
each vibration strumming the covalent in
the fellow
announcing the rapacity
speaking the capacity
waves and troughs of whispered revelation
signal stone to stone
rocking lulling damping
our whereabouts each moment
beneath the sleepers, there
I hold tight to every story
given to me moving
mouth to ear mouth to ear mouth to ear
yama-ndhu
gulbarra?
do you understand?
*gunya is the Wiradjuri word for home
** Pak-Ah-Pu is a Chinese form of bingo ticket, and a slang for a messy room
***The Gidjiman is a person who doesn't know their people.
Dear Kerri, Although I fear that I am just another Gidjiman, I love this poem. Sad and beautiful and also hopeful, these expressions of memory speaking, because love figures in there. You still hear the echoes. Those questions "Who are your people?" and "Where is your country?" are as relevant as ever...even as the echoes grow fainter.
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DeleteIt reflected a lot of conversation between me and female cousins and Banjalung and Kamilleroi women about the words of childhood - did we imagine them? Why did we not speak them? What did we understand them to mean. It has been a wonderful return to the love as you say, that we all feel for out mutual past and family connections. Without them we were lost.
DeleteP.S. For some reason it made me go listen to Moby's "Study War" song.
ReplyDeleteI love th way you listen to the landscape, from th moving train!
ReplyDeletejust wonderful!
ReplyDeletemouth to ear and mouth to listen at! Thanks for the poem and the rythm I can feel in my body while reading it out loud
ReplyDeleteGreat poem. I think and write a lot about home and belonging, and often discuss the meanings of those concepts with my students when studying both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian literature, so your poem really speaks to me.
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