They Would Happy Be
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They Would Happy Be the Ones

Written in Brisbane, Australia,  in 1986.

(c) by Paul Hall, 1987.

Well, it could hardly be called a "walkabout", you know.  Because when a chap goes walkabout, he goes across the outback with nothing but a couple of implements, mostly nude, and then when he comes back on foot in about a year, that is if he comes back, then he's considered by the tribe to have entered manhood.  So I guess my trip around half of Australia (up the guts) in about three or four months wouldn't qualify, particularly since I hitch hiked and rode the bus.  Still a kid at heart, I guess...

But I did go on a mini hike, in fact, several.  I used a photo I took of myself walking through former gold fields (using the timer with the camera on a rock) for the visual information for the human figure in the center of a work of art (click here to see the painting).  So when I got to Brisbane, what I call "Brizzie", I got a cheap hotel room where I could write some verse. which ended up in a compilation called "Texts Immutable".  It was one of two I wrote on that trip.  The other one was in Tenant Creek, called, aptly, "A Tenant in Tenant Creek".

I put the "Immutable" series to music and I bunged this one's song on the page background sound.  So if you've got the explorer browser, five point five or so, or something compatible, you'll most probably hear it if you wait a few minutes.  And if you've something like i.e. 5.5, no worries.  She'll be right, mate.  Grab a tinnie while you're waiting.

They would happy be the ones

who finally did not send

their hopes into the elements

of that which does pretend

and vaunt into magnificence

a sedentary end

where die

the things 

men once called great

that armies did defend

For excellence emerges rough

    into a blistering sun,

and where the difficult does sting

eternity's begun.

True happiness rejects the blend

of noxious with refined

to make of hopelessness

a start

in stalwart 

states of mind.

And then when courses

have been run

and this world's left behind

They would happy be the ones    

who in the distance find

that Earth's despair

was just a bluff

where the dismal stayed entwined

into a state of changelessness

where could-have-seen

stays blind. 

For excellence emerges rough

into a blistering sun,

and where the difficult does sting

eternity's begun.

True happiness rejects the blend

of noxious with refined

to make of hopelessness

a start

in stalwart 

states of mind.

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