This Henry Lawson poem, put to music by Australian singer/ songwriter Phyl Lobl, came to me through Martyn Wyndham-Read. I heard him sing it unaccompanied at Marmaduke's Pub in Annapolis, Maryland, a couple of years ago. Kathy Westra Hickerson sent me a living-room tape of him singing the song shortly after. The poem itself is a bitter statement about the loneliness of a woman's life in the sparsely populated parts of Australia. Ann worked hard to create a musical arrangement that complements its stark and bitter tone. [ET] The only hope I could discover in this song was in believing that, if the woman could speak about the despair in her heart, it was a first step toward acceptance and, in time, healing. [AMM]
Up and down the sidling brown,
A great black crow is flying;
Just below a spur I know,
Another milker's dying.
Crops have withered to the ground;
Red clay tank is glaring.
From my heart no tear or sound,
For I have grown past caring.
Through death and trouble, turn about,
Through hopeless desolation,
Through flood and fever, fire and drought,
Through slavery and starvation,
Through childhood sickness, hot and blight,
Through loneliness and scaring,
Through being left alone at night,
I've grown to be past caring.
Our first child took, on days like these,
A cruel week in dying,
There upon her father's knees
Or on my breast a-lying.
The tears we shed, the prayers we said,
Were awful, wild, despairing.
I pulled three through and buried two;
Since then, I've grown past caring.
'Twas ten years first, then came the worst,
All for a barren clearing.
I thought, I thought my heart would burst
When first my man went shearing.
He's droving in the great Northwest;
I don't know how he's faring,
And I, the girl who loved him best,
Have grown to be past caring.
My eyes are dry, I cannot cry,
I have no heart for breaking.
Where it was, in days gone by,
It's empty, dull and aching.
My last boy ran away from me;
I know my temper's wearing.
Now I only wish to be
Beyond all signs of caring.
Past bothering, past caring,
Past feeling and despairing;
Now I only wish to be
Beyond all signs of caring.