In this 1987 recording, Ruth Dallas reads three of her poems: ‘Milking before dawn’ from her first collection, Country road (1953); ‘The Remarkables, Queenstown’, from her second collection, The turning wheel (1961); and the first and fourth stanzas of ‘Moods of a day’, from her third collection Shadow show (1968). The photograph shows Dallas in 1968, at the time of her Burns Fellowship in Dunedin.

Milking before Dawn

In a drifting rain the cows in the yard are as black
And wet and shiny as rocks in an ebbing tide;
But they smell of the soil, as leaves lying under trees
Smell of the soil, damp and steaming, warm.
The shed is an island of light and warmth, the night
Was water-cold and starless out in the paddock.

Crouched on the stool, hearing only the beat
The monotonous beat and hiss of the smooth machines,
A choking gasp of the cups and rattle of hooves,
How easy to fall asleep again, to think
Of the man in the city asleep; he does not feel
The night encircle him, the grasp of mud.

But now the hills in the east return, are soft
And grey with mist, the night recedes, and the rain.
The earth as it turns towards the sun is young
Again, renewed, its history wiped away,
Like the tears of a child. Can the earth be young again
And not the heart? Let the man in the city sleep.

Ruth Dallas. Collected poems: 15

The Remarkables, Queenstown

Slowly, without sound the wheel turns,
Dry rock shall nourish a forest of ferns.
That harsh lizard-backed mountain range
Appearing changeless in a sky of change,
Grave dinosaur dozing on
Heavy bone heaped on heavy bone,
To water yields, will fall and fall away
Till shells are white on the sea-bed where it lay;
Water, that gives the willow her soft hair
And asks not whether she is bent or fair,
Holding a glass for all or none to see
Time at rest in moving cloud and tree.

Ruth Dallas. Collected poems: 56

From Moods of a Day

1.

I rise in the morning to find
Overnight the world ended.
Silence and darkness.
What has become
Of the people of earlier time?
Some are remembered,
And some not.
After breakfast I notice
Birds singing.
I read a few poems.
At length the fracture
Between yesterday and today heals.

[…]

4.

In the evening I dine
With a few friends
And we discuss
Literary influences,
The necessity to rid the mind
Of accumulated junk and to see clearly.
But nothing comes of it.
Each returns to his familiar view.
I carry home
A branch of unopened plum blossom,
New plants for my garden,
Sometimes an unwritten poem.

Ruth Dallas. Collected poems: 86–87