David Campbell poems
David Campbell(16 July 1915 - 29 July 1979 / Ellerslie)
At The Sheep-Dog Trials
- by David Campbell 66
What ancestors uniteHere in this red and white
Kelpie to define
His symmetry of line,
As crouched in burning dust
He halts both Time and beast?
The wethers stamp the ground,
At his will turn around.
He is of collie stock:
Austerity of rock
Has lent his mind and bone
The toughness of its stone.
And though for Border flocks
The collie and the fox
Fought tooth to tooth, they joined
And have the kelpie coined
Whose ears acutely set
Across the centuries yet
Hear the concordant sound
Of coupled horn and hound;
And as the moon the tides
The hidden vixen guides
With craft the blood that strains
And surges in his veins.
Those who stand and stare
At cripples in the fair
Have not the eyes to see
His blood's dignity
Where old adversaries meet,
As now on velvet feet
He moves to his master's call,
In action classical.
The Stockman
- by David Campbell 55
The sun was in the summer grass,the Coolibahs* were twisted steel;
the stockman paused beneath their shade
and sat upon his heel,
and with the reins looped through his arm
he rolled tobacco in his palm.
His horse stood still, His cattle-dog
tongued in the shadow of the tree,
and for a moment on the plain
Time waited for the three,
and then the stockman licked his fag
and Time took up his solar swag.
I saw the stockman mount and ride,
across the mirage on the plain;
and still that timeless moment brought
fresh ripples to my brain;
it seemed in that distorting air
I saw his grandson sitting there.