AUSTRALIA AT WAR

DEDICATION TO THE MEN OF THE A.I.F. To you who tread that dire itinerary Who go like pedlars down the routes of Death, Grey in its bloody traffic, but who gaze Inured upon its scarlet merchandise With eyes too young to have yet wholly shed The pity moving roundness of the child— To you, like cave men rough-hewn of the mud, Housed in a world made primal mud again, With terrors of that legendary past, Reborn to iron palpability, Roaring upon the earth with every wind— To you who go to do the work of wolves Burdened like mules, and bandying with Death— To hide the silent places of the soul— The ribald jests that half convince the blind It does not wholly anguish you to die— To you who through those days upon the Somme, About you still the odours of our bush, I saw come down, with eyes like tired mares, Along the jamming traffic of Mametz, Creeping each man, detached among his kind, Along a separate Hell of memory— To you, and you, I dedicate these things That have no merit save that they, for you, Were woven with what truth there was in me Where you went up, with Death athwart the wind Poised like a hawk a-strike—to save the world, Or else to succour poor old bloody Bill Beleaguered in a shell hole on the ridge. W. D.