> Subject: RE: Craigielee/Waltzing Matilda > From: GUEST,chrisj > Date: 16-Oct-01 - 10:04 PM > > In the 'resurrection' of this thread earlier this week > (which I hadn't read before) I saw a passing reference > to the Kokoda Trail, scene of Australia's hour of > greatest danger in World War II. Makes me wonder if > there are any songs dealing with it?

No songs that I jnow of, but here's a poem. It owes a lot to "Verdun" by the Countess of Noailles:

KOKODA Silence embraces the greatest name in our memory. Endless jungle along the Kokoda. Here our men came, one by one, Day by day, hour by hour, step by step, to stand with proud and stoic love. They fell in the grim ordeal.

Kokoda, their eternal and weeping widow bows down, her forested ridges a shroud on the corpse.

Pass by, and silence your empty praises of the hills which were shadowed with the wings of angels flashing from wounds in the bodies of men. Blood has flowed here so profusely that no other human voice has the right to add its vain and feeble lament to its rising incense.

See, in these gashed and bloodied hillsides, the power of love of "Patriotism" For which the bravest hearts have ben put beneath the soil. Here, each knew he came to die; the greatest sacrifice, made for all.

The Earth opened and received them: it is made Man.