Silent Street

Colombian ballads smooth
the Melbourne to Moyston run
They sing of love and yearning
As cleaving through yellow canola fields
We reach the rowdy pobble bonks

The banjos bonk and pobble with
Their frantic mating cries
As the wattle birds in nextdoor bowers
Hiccup their strange accompaniment

And all too soon the silent moon
Throws down its ghostly challenge
But despite the calm of silver threads
Across the billabong’s nardoo stars
There’s no hushing lymnodynastes
He’s compelled to lord these marshes

Oh silent moon over Silent Street
Tomorrow there’s a challenge
For between the cramping bulging rocks
oozed into curved and solid lumps
Wondering wanderers will pass

They will know they are in Silent Street
And will try to observe its ancient strictures
As they pass along its squishy nave,
On this old hallowed ground

But there’s an urge to yell in Silent Street
To yell aloud its beauty
To cut the silence with an echo
Another reverberation in the bonk and pobble of the day

(Sally Cook)