Our boys were not the sons of Adonis

Our boys were not the sons of Adonis
grown rangey under dappled skies
slender saplings easily bowed by scorching winds.
The ragtag offspring of itinerants,
selectors, miners and factory hands
and farmhouse mothers
who prayed each day for safe returns.

They signed up at post offices and public halls
where weatherboards sagged with grief.
Determined officers marshaled them
for somewhere over there.

In trenches under Turkish suns
they ripened into mate ship
darkening like harvest prunes
and wrote to freckled girls back home.

Upon return
they waved at crowded platforms,
tried to ignore bandages and tourniquets
sand hill burials at dusk.

Settled into Mallee Scrub and Saltbush,
they spent silent years gazing into fruitless sunsets
eclipsing bullet stings and shrapnel blasts
and questions from wives and inquisitive sons.