Ghosts and memories are loitering still in the corridors of time There's sorrow, smoke, and stories in the barracks of my mind I'm with him still in the trenches, I can see his dark, brown eyes And his courage gave me courage when I was sure we were going to die I asked him once why he volunteered for that hell-hole far away To fight for someone else's king and the land they took away He said, "One invading mob's too many" and then he walked away And I lost him in the crowds waving flags on the side of the road — like every Anzac Day
From Murray Bridge and Mundrabilla, from Naracoote and Perth First Australian station hands, shearers, gangers, clerks And there was no black, there was no white, just a dirty khaki brown And on our upturned slouch hat brims, we all wore the "Rising Sun" Soldiers, brothers, all Australians, we had no time for race When the bullets are whining past your head, you're all just shades of grey He kept his medals in their box in a drawer — he tucked them well away But he'd pull them out and put them on and put them back again — on every Anzac Day Every Anzac, every Anzac, every Anzac Day — on every Anzac Day
Armentieres and Flanders, Tarin Kowt and Salamau-Lae Amiens and Morotai, Long Tan, Dispersal Bay Somalia, Crete and Kapyong, Iraq and the Solomons Paschendaele, Maprik and Tarakan — they were there — the first Australians
And when the show was over and we made it back to Australia's shores From Pozieres and Herleville Wood, Benghazi and Fremicourt We drifted back into our lives, and we all tried to hide the scars Of the tears and fears and terrors that still tracked us down the years He tried to join the RSL but the bastards wouldn't let him in They didn't see a soldier, just a first Australian And I wonder what it was that we fought for and what it was we gave away There's reconciliation still to come — on every Anzac Day Every Anzac, every Anzac, every Anzac Day — on every Anzac Day
Coda: So when the sun sets in the evening, when the dawn lights up the sky We remember those first Australians, who joined and fought and died From the missions, bush and station country, towns and Torres Straits We remember the fighting First Australians — now — and on every Anzac Day Every Anzac, every Anzac, every Anzac Day — on every Anzac Day, on Every Anzac Every Anzac, every Anzac, every Anzac Day — on every Anzac Day, on Every Anzac On every Anzac Day
We have posted a few poems by Jack Sorensen that have been set to music. This one hasn't been set to music, but it is pertinent to some of the crap occurring today.
TO A FALLEN COMRADE
I hope that I will never see your name Graven in stone and set in a pubic place Where one drab day in all the long gay year Men congregate and speak their platitudes Saying of you and all the helpless host Of names which once meant laughter, love and hope That you were brave and that you freely gave Your all, that such and such might ever be
I know nor care not whether you were brave In that dread curtain call of your life's play You had in you all that I value most In human kind before they marched you forth To save, if you did save, the fleeting thing Flooded with glory light that shone so wan On you whose glory was your manly heart You could not be exalted or debased
I will not think of you as when I saw Your shattered body lying in the sun Wide vacant eyes fixed on an empty sky A burlesque in the comely human shape There is no dignity in violent death Rather will I remember you as when On an October day, we climbed the range And saw our fathers' homesteads in the glen
This 'Late Night Live' program is worth a listen in this context: