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The Bundaleer Throne

We live out at Bundaleer in
A cabin, in the bush,
Where the air is so much cleaner,
And there's little need to rush,
We have pigs and sheep and chickens,
And we pick our vegies fresh,
So it caused a stir of interest
When we heard of Uncle's death!

Now the 'Uncle' was my mother's
So he wasn't close to us,
And in fact we'd never met him,
Just heard tales of 'Uncle Gus',
He'd been in the 4th Light Horse
At Beersheba, so they said,
In that last great charge of cavalry
That stained the desert red.

'He became a touch eccentric
After that, ' my mother sighed,
'And for years we never heard of him,
We thought he might have died.
But it seems that he'd been wandering
In Egypt and elsewhere,
And collecting all those knick-knacks
In his cottage at Gulnare.'

The morning that they read his will
It came as a surprise,
For we'd never even known him,
Nor my mother, bless her eyes,
But he'd left to us a token to
Collect down at Gulnare,
From his cottage, it was massive,
Was this old Egyptian chair!

It was made of cane and cedar,
And some stuff that was antique,
There were carvings, funny pictures
Carved on plates of ivory,
It was most dilapidated like
He'd kept it in the barn,
So we used the truck of Barry's,
And we brought it to the farm.

Then we washed it and we scrubbed it
And it came up rather nice,
But when friends came round to gawk
I simply said - 'Oh, that's the wife's! '
They'd grin and wink as if to say
'We think your wife's a loon! '
I'd shrug, and say, 'Oh, I don't know....
That chair sets off the room! '

That night the wind was restless
As it eddied through the trees,
There were lots of weird creakings
In the cattle sheds, the eaves,
And the wife, she woke up crying,
Said she felt this deep despair,
'I was dancing to strange music,
There was blossom in my hair! '

The morning saw the wind swing round
Come in from north and west,
It brought in swarms of locusts
On the land, just like a vest,
They stripped the country round about
They covered up the green,
The locals said the swarm was big,
The biggest ever seen!

We noticed that the weather changed,
Was hot, as dry as dust,
And the bush became all yellow
And the leaves resembled rust,
While mice infested every barn,
Ate locusts by the score,
Then poured in by the hundreds
Through the open cottage door.

That night I lay awake, and heard
Some voices, whispered low,
Outside there, in the darkness,
By the open patio,
I went out to investigate
But only saw the trees,
The shadows in the moonlight,
And I heard the drone of bees.

The morning saw a hundred swarms
All hanging from the boughs,
'You'll have to call in Corrigan,
The Apiarist, for now! '
But Corrigan was limited
With insufficient hives,
I'd sprayed them all, and killed them,
Before Corrigan arrived.

That night I saw dim shadows cast
On windows, that were men,
But wearing ancient uniforms,
With spears and shields, and then...
A guard appeared to walk along
The meadow, by the bog,
The shadow that his head had cast,
It looked just like a dog!

I sat that night and fell asleep
Upon our special 'throne',
And there, within the darkness,
In my sleep, I heard a groan,
A voice, raised up to heaven seemed
To come from near and far,
I didn't understand a word...
But one I did was - Ra!

The morning brought a plague of dust,
The wind howled round in space,
By evening, you couldn't see
Your hand before your face,
My wife sobbed uncontrollably,
She said: 'We're caught in sin!
That 'throne' has brought these plagues on us,
That throne's an evil thing! '

We lay that night in terror while
The phantoms clashed outside,
And troops of horses whinnied,
Shields clashed, and soldiers died,
The throne lies by the apple tree
Illumined by each star,
While Pharoah sleeps eternally,
At one out there, with Ra!

4 July 2010

poem by David Lewis Paget
Added by Poetry Lover
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