In the cool of the night
underneath the lamplight
in a little wilderness of stray grassland
beside the railway line
I sense what is left behind

The mood of this night
as it settles on the old homes
I have seen long before
in the tilting gaze
of young men

Young men
who rode straight
but in the old pictures
sometimes looked away
as if they knew their fate

To inherit, briefly
To have your life tied together
with the sky and the soil
To be left alone
in the quiet streets of a town
or on bare windswept hills
To have thoughts far away
To have them undisturbed

This is over now
There is no room
to look so far away
But still the roses twine
in the lowering light
on the porches of old redbrick houses

And still the night
lays something of the past
in front of me.

– Mark Richardson writes at OzConservative, a blog dedicated to Australian traditionalist conservatism, and is the Co-Convenor of the Melbourne Traditionalists. Mark Richardson’s work has also appeared in the print version of The Independent Australian and he is currently working on a book which will be released later this year.

SydneyTrads is the web page of the Sydney Traditionalist Forum: an association of young professionals who form part of the Australian independent right (also known as “non-aligned right”).