Dark eyes 31:01:99
Dark eyes, Nyoongar eyes look me up and down, you worked with that old man - yarn...?
What they want ?
What am I supposed to say - nartj...?
Yeah, I wandered Kellerberrin’s Massingham Street, baarniny...
I just simply followed my feet, then I climbed into his mind - daandanginy...
Like I climbed into his brain - then wandered corridors that took me to old books and a burning flame - kaalanginy...
What did you see - they ask? djinaanginy...
I saw Volumes of his-story , sagas, Noongar literature,
read of secrets, songs, man-u-scripts and those of women - chapters and chapters of centuries...generations - mai ngaattamornong-koorliny...
I’d be there for weeks at a time, and, you see I had the keys to his mind.
I came and went as I pleased.
But, you know I couldn’t afford a ladder, damned step ladder.
That’s all it would have taken, ATSIC’s promised step ladder - but it never came, yay daandaang daabbatiny...
On the top shelf high above my head down his well lit corridors my stumbling feet were led - kair-koodiny
There many volumes were stacked, its antiquity intact, all of it untouched, unread and waiting - kokkinyininy...
Several shelves were out on loan, his memory fading, never to be returned - kairnyak..
This library of his mind, but with so little time.
I tried to tell ‘em, closing time is near - balartminy kaadjaanginy...
On his death bed, before his last dying breath, I looked into his eyes,
my old friend - werrniny...
This whole library, Nyoongar library,
sagas and all - songs and their law were dying.
Then I heard the Nyoongar crying, when their wailing had ceased, mopoke all sorts of birds were flying or was it the wind - yelbiny...
Then I caught the easterly wind come sighing from the land of his birth - benn bordok...
With the sun.
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4 comments:
Nyorn...I can't imagine the loss that you must feel - for your dear friend and for what went with him.
Trust in your journey Tim - know that he entrusted these gifts to you for a reason - even if the way forward isn't clear to you yet...he is guiding you still!
Wadjella Yorga, yep, when the old man passed away, the sense of what was lost was huge! He was both a friend and an individual who knew a great deal. The reader of one of my manuscripts had said he wasn't exceptional, saying that he was like so many other Noongar men in the southwest. But this reader said this having never known the man or being witness to the depths of knowledge he carried. What went with him was substantial! And this is an understatement. But strange, Noongar Land Council anthropologists/historians when they finally made an effort to meet with the old man Humphries, did so 6 months after his passing! Their reasons for their absence remain unclear. Perhaps they were recording like-minded 'similar people' to him, people with the libraries of their people intact and waiting to be heard. Doubly strange was that the present Noongar Land Council, SWALSC, used materials unknown to the Humphries family, portions of their father's story I had previously recorded for the West Australian Forest Alliance in 1998. They represented this knowledge as if they themselves had been party to its recording, but nothing was further from the truth. They neither asked nor sought permission to use it. But apart from that, from what I can see, his knowledge was largely ignored by the very authorities that should have led the way in its recording. I still feel very bitter about it all. How could such things be allowed to pass away and be forgotten?!
SWALSC - gate keepers my brother calls them. Lock people in and lock others out.
Mummabare, great to see you visiting my blog. Yep, I can understand what your brother means by gatekeepers. What I want to know is who has the keys to that locked gate?? Noongar don't seem to be in control of that organisation. Surely if they valued Noongar language and culture they'd make an attempt to contact people who shared such a passion? Yep, sure there's some Noongar figure heads at the front (gate), but who controls the internal organs? But more than this... Just as so many ignored the old Humphries and his knowledge, one wonders if this organisation can be trusted to get it right in its negotiations with the State Government - because in leaving the old man alone to his fire unsupported and ignored, one wonders, as one should, how can they guarantee that they can get it right this time?
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