[ross hamilton hill]

Kuminjay

The blind boy sits in the travelling dark
and the rippling roof is chanting soft.
He’s Buddha like in his endless night
where no stars wake and blink the light.

Three hundred K’s to the college gates;
a foreigner bound for narrow straits
that his blank stare must daily face
as others ape his shuffling gait.

Goodbye my friend, our Kuminjay.
Hope you sing your songs some day.
I called you son; was your skin brother.
Rare late in life to love another.

notes
Kuminjay: is an aboriginal term used when a boy has lost his father, if he has the same name as his father he cannot be called by that name for two years, instead he is called Kuminjay.
foreigner: tribal aboriginals speak their own language(s), an Australian boarding college is a new world for them.
skin brother: is a kinship initiation into a tribe, I became Kuminjay’s ‘skin brother’, he is my ‘skin uncle’.