KNOCKED UP
(Lawson/Wyndham-Read)

I'm lyin' on this barren ground that's baked and cracked with drought
And don’t know if my legs or back or heart is most wore out
I've got no spirit left to raise and ease my achin' brow
I'm too knocked up to light a fire and boil the billy now

A long dry stretch of thirty miles I've tramped this broiling day
All for the off-chance of a job a hundred miles away
There's twenty hungry beggars wild for any work this year
And maybe fifty at the sheds while I am lying here

The sinews in my legs seem drawn, red hot and that's the truth
I seem to weigh a ton, and ache like one tremendous tooth
I'm stung between my shoulder blades, my blessed back seems broke
I'm too knocked up to eat a bite, I’m too knocked up to smoke

The blessed rains are coming too, there's oceans in the sky
And I suppose I should get up and rig that blasted fly
The heat is bad, the food is bad, the flies a crimson curse
Mosquitoes damned, the water’s bad, but rheumatism's worse

I don’t know why poor blokes like me will cling so hard to breath
Though Shakespeare says it is a thing we fear after death
And though eternity be cursed by God's almighty curse
Whatever that same somethin' is I swear it can't be worse

Martyn Wyndham-Read's adaptation of the Lawson poem. He has omitted several stanzas.

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--Stewie.