After yesterday’s (very biased) list of the ten best Christmas poems, I went looking for the ten best poems I could find written by Australians. It wasn’t easy. Banjo Paterson wrote a couple: Santa Claus Comes to Camp was written during the first World War and Santa Claus in the Bush where he, bizarrely, gives the farmer and his wife a Scottish accent.
It chanced out back at the
Christmas time,
When the wheat was ripe and tall,
A stranger rode to the farmer's gate —
A sturdy man and small.
"Rinn doon, rinn doon, my wee son Jack,
And bid the stranger stay;
And we'll hae a crack for Auld Lang Syne,
For the morrow is Christmas Day."
Henry Lawson’s poem, A Bush Fire, was set at Christmas time but, apart from those, most other stuff is very lightweight.
There are parodies of northern hemisphere poems with an Australian flavour: the most famous probably being Six White Boomers (written by a convicted paedophile) where kangaroos replace the traditional reindeer. Tim Minchin’s White Wine on the Beach, like Boomers is a song but better captures the essential nature of a winter celebration translated into a summer setting.
But, for me, the best of all the Australian Christmas poems is Les Murray’s The Barranong Angel Case. It’s too long to reproduce in full but here’s the beginning.
You see that bench in front of Meagher's store?
That's where the angel landed.
What? An angel?
Yes. It was just near smoko time on a sale day.
Town was quite full. He called us all together.
And was he obeyed?
Oh yes. He got a hearing.
Made his announcement, blessed us and took off
Again, straight up.
He had most glorious wings . . . .
What happened then?
There were some tasks he'd set us
Or rather that sort of followed from his message.
And were they carried out?
At first we meant to,
But after a while, when there had been some talk
Most came to think he'd been a bit, well, haughty,
A bit overdone, with those flourishes of wings
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