Context for this poem: Bushrangers were Australian outlaws and escaped convicts – people who lived off armed robbery and took refuge in the Australian bush. One of the last and most famous of these bushrangers was Ned Kelly (1854 – 1880). This poem is based off Peter Carey’s novel True History of the Kelly Gang, which I was forced to read in high school. Turns out, it wasn’t a bad book. This is what I took away from it.
It’s too late for me to take an apprentice
But if I could, the first thing I’d tell him is “chin high”
Because no man ever made history with his head hanging canopy over the dirt.
“Adjectival loser,” I’ll call him from the beginning, “You can’t do an adjectival thing right”,
And if he’s any man at all he’ll take my advice and raise his head and look me straight back in the eye,
And that’ll be the moment when his roots decide to anchor themselves firmly into what he knows to be right.
That boy,
Is going to fall where I fell.
He’s going to sink his feet into the same quicksand as I, flounder in the same rivers, gasp for the same air out of desperation for one more moment of humanity,
But the only difference is that I’ll be there
To cuff the hopelessness out of his mind until he can think clearly again.
Such is life.
I have seen days when
The sun seems to be shining but gloom covers every inch of bush
I’ve seen people
Who come in as many shades of different as there are stars in the Outback sky.
I myself
Can’t tell if I’m an adjectival hero or just a man seeped in delusion,
Trying to break free of chains that never even existed,
Or so they say.
“Loser,” I’ll tell that boy, “don’t let them define you, no matter what shortcuts you have to take in order to climb your way to the top,
They’ll call you names that even I’ll be too modest to repeat
Curdled all together with hatred for the very blood that runs in your veins,
And
You’re gonna have to keep your chin up
No matter how much it trembles.”
It’s not brute force that makes a bushranger.
It’s how well you take the blows.
“Boy,” I’ll tell him, “The longer you stand your ground like that, the more hope there is for the new world you’re trying to create,
These people who call you a monster?
Well,
They’re not adjectival going anywhere, so it’s time you built a legacy that will drown out their harshest words.”
If I could have an apprentice,
I’d tell him to stomp out my well-trod footsteps –
“Stand up,” I’ll say, “so the world can see you.
Stand out, so the world will know you.
Adjectival loser, you won’t be a loser for long,
The present may be dark,
But your future is
bright.”
(This is the last internal monologue of the infamous bushranger Ned Kelly.)