ON AUSTRALIA: Where has the magic gone?

"And, I will walk and talk in gardens all misty, wet, with rain. And, I shall never, ever, ever, grow so old again" Van Morrison

Where has the magic gone? ...Australia has none left.
The dry country absorbs the magic from our pores as rent.
This earth was red two billion years ago, when bacteria was born.
And the poetry is long gone.

I must walk in the gardens dry with faith
I must walk the hedgerows of my ancestors' memories all alone
The dust of the day is thick on my skin when I fall asleep
And I must redream the world.

Hate is just more soul-sweat
Sucked greedily into the dry crust of the land. Don't hate it,
Seek the soul's sweet urgency within, o spiritus sactus
Wake into a vigor heat can't hurt!

Where has the magic of endless youth gone to?
Somewhere this island can not longer respond to!
Far beyond the dreadful desert island
Springs that fountain of life that strives to create!

In my dreams the fey paths I travel
The paths of my ancestors in the wet forests of ancient Europe
The shaggy Cro-Magnons that hunt, red-haired Neaderthals
That dance under a bloody moon.

I hail from the highlands
I stream down the spring snows in rivulets
I course among the heather and the heath and through
The champing-cold of the dales I blossom;

I am the salmon in the deep cold Danube
I am the wild wolves in the shadow of the matterhorn
I am the wild kestel leading the Viking boats home
and I am the lofty hawk above Jericho's waters.

Their green dreams drift down centuries to me
And I am epitome and epitaph of these
True memories that sing in the sleeping blood
And hanker against Australia's hot horizons.

I long to flood the songlines with emotion.
Fill this aboriginal continent with true praise.
A hundred thousand years they burnt the island, every year.
And I'm ashamed they bought the land to this.