Ted - Redgum

On a back block down
Salisbury
Plains Ted was born in 1895
Thrust from the loins on to rusty soil
And the cord was cut with a scythe
He said "People there are city folk today And they couldn't tell **** from clay A ripening crop of stobie poles There's no regrets when the memory roams That earth is in me bones"
Did his bit in the first
World War
Took the shilling to fight the
Hun Mud up to his crotch in
Flanders fields
And the gas eating out his lungs
He said "Me best mate died hanging on the barbed wire And when the attack was through We took some prisoners to HQ And shared a fag and a yarn or two They were the same as me and you"
And I asked old
Ted what history meant
As he sharpened his hedging shears "What a bloody fool question that is my boy I lived it for 83 years"
See him every year on
Anzac Day
Swilling beers down at the
Rex Hotel
He'd laugh with his mates and go deep in thought
Where he went even he couldn't tell
He said "King and Country, cock'n'bull We fought just to survive The anger might have faded still this feeling grabs me deep inside I guess you could call it pride"
As a navvy on the line in the
Nullabor The
Depression left its scars
Heaving cold steel rails in the burning sun
And freezing beneath the stars
He said "If you escaped the susso queues You had a hell of price to pay And when time flowed like an open wound I'd blow me dough on a Saturday And drink the pain away"
On Sunday arvo he'd sit and talk
Over a dozen cold
West End Of what was gained and what was lost
And would never come again
He said "Money you know it comes and goes On booze and rent and fags You can make a fortune on overtime And lose it all on the nags But years of toil with a bunch of mates You know it leaves you satisfied Though we never moved a mountain We sure gave it a try"
Pick the wheat from the chaff
And the steel from the scurf
And the honest man from the liar
If wisdom came by other names
Ted was earth and fire
On the day that old
Ted died No-one would have known
Buried in a pauper's grave
He lived and died alone
And the 727s roared overhead
Withe the drone of the angry roads
There seemed a pause for just a while
And the silence was heard around for miles
And the silence was heard for miles
编辑于2024/01/11更新