Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Gary Snyder’s "Uluru Wild Fig Song" is a vivid, immersive meditation on land, ritual, and bodily presence in the Australian outback. Structured in five sections, the poem moves between geological observation, cultural encounter, personal purification, and a reflection on history’s imprint on the land. Snyder’s characteristic fusion of direct experience, ecological awareness, and an engagement with Indigenous traditions allows the poem to unfold as both a physical journey and a spiritual song—a call to attunement with the land, its history, and its scars.

The first section establishes the landscape with a geological eye: "Soft earth turns straight up / curls out and away from its base / hard and red—a dome—five miles around / Ayers Rock, Uluru." The movement of the earth, both soft and hard, reflects Uluru’s presence as both an object and a process, shaped by time, weather, and erosion. By naming it in both colonial (Ayers Rock) and Indigenous (Uluru) terms, Snyder acknowledges the layered histories of the place. The "damp earth wash-off watershed margin" introduces a transitional space, a meeting of rock and sand, where life gathers. The presence of "Clustering chittering zebra finches," "red-eyed pink-foot little dove," and the push through vegetation suggests a thriving ecosystem despite the arid environment.

As the poem moves deeper into the rock’s overhangs, it encounters the human marks left on the land: "painted red circles in circles, black splayed-out human bodies, painted lizards, wavy lines." These symbols are remnants of Aboriginal rock art, mapping both spiritual and physical histories. The layering of these images—circles within circles, bodies spread out, animals—suggests both cosmology and survival, a vision of existence that is inseparable from place. The discovery of a "native fig tree / heavy-clustered, many ripe" near the cave reinforces this idea. The casual observation—"someone must have sat here, shat here long ago."—collapses time, blending past and present. The fig tree, nourished by past human activity, becomes a literal embodiment of continuity between those who lived here before and the speaker who now sits beneath it.

The second section shifts to an act of bodily immersion: "Sit in the dust / take the clothes off. / feel it on the skin / lay down, roll around / run sand through your hair." The act of stripping down and physically connecting with the land transforms the experience from one of observation to full participation. The "nap an hour / bird calls through dreams / now you're clean." suggests a kind of purification, not through water but through dust, air, and the sheer openness of the land. This cleansing is not just physical but also psychological—a return to an elemental state.

The section then expands into a communal scene: "sitting on red sand ground with a dog. / breeze blowing, full moon, / women singing over there— / men clapping sticks and singing here." This division of sound—women’s voices in one space, men’s percussion in another—mirrors traditional Aboriginal ceremony, where songlines, clapping sticks, and storytelling maintain cultural and territorial memory. The image of "eating meaty bone, hold the dog off with one foot" situates the speaker within a primal, embodied existence, far from the abstracted, industrialized world. The "long walk singing the land" reinforces the practice of songlines—where the land is not just occupied but continuously created through song and movement.

The third section, "naked but decorated," introduces the ritual significance of bodily markings: "scarred, white ash white clay, / scars on the chest, lines of scars on the loin." These scars serve as "the gate, the path, the seal, the proof." They are markers of initiation, of belonging to a lineage of experience that is not merely symbolic but etched into flesh. The repetition of "white ash white clay" suggests both a connection to ceremony and a contrast between the body’s materiality and the dust of the land. The image of "white-barred birds under the dark sky" evokes a sense of watching, of witnessing something ancient.

In the fourth section, Snyder introduces a striking contemporary moment: "singing and drumming at the school / a blonde-haired black-skinned girl watching / and same time teasing a friend." The girl’s "blonde-haired black-skinned" appearance hints at mixed heritage, a fusion of Aboriginal and settler ancestry, a physical embodiment of colonial history and cultural resilience. The next lines—"dress half untied, naked beneath, / young breasts like the mulpu mushroom, / swelling up through sand."—are sensual, but not voyeuristic. The comparison to the mulpu mushroom, which emerges suddenly from the earth, emphasizes growth, change, and the land’s presence in the body.

Yet, the transition is abrupt: "stiff wind close to the ground, / trash lodged in the spinifex, / the fence, the bottles, broken cars." This moment brings modernity crashing into the scene—the debris of colonialism, industrial waste, and the scars of dispossession. The "fence" signifies enclosure, the restriction of movement in a landscape once defined by walking and songlines. The "broken cars" suggest abandonment, stagnation, a severance from traditional rhythms of life. This contrast between natural ceremony and discarded modernity captures the tension that defines many Indigenous communities, where ancient practices persist alongside the detritus of imposed systems.

The final section returns to stillness: "Sit down in the sand / skin to the ground. / a thousand miles of open gritty land / white cockatoo on a salt pan / hard wild fig on the tongue." The simplicity of these images reinforces the land’s endurance beyond human history. "A thousand miles of open gritty land" emphasizes scale, reminding the reader of how vast and uncontainable this place remains. The "white cockatoo on a salt pan" suggests life persisting even in the harshest conditions. The "hard wild fig on the tongue" brings the poem full circle, returning to the fig tree from the first section, now experienced not just as an object of observation but as something consumed, taken into the body.

The closing phrase—"this wild fig song."—suggests that the poem itself is a kind of songline, a record of movement, presence, and transformation. Snyder’s decision to name specific Indigenous communities in the final note—"Fall of 40081, Ulum, Amata, Fregon, Papunya, Ilpili, Austral."—grounds the poem in real places, acknowledging the people and histories that shape this land.

"Uluru Wild Fig Song" is a poem of immersion, where the speaker moves from external observer to participant, from a traveler in the land to someone marked by it. Snyder presents the landscape not as a passive setting but as an active force—one that shapes those who engage with it, offering both history and sustenance. The contrast between ceremony and modernity, between scars and renewal, between waste and resilience, underscores the complexities of place, history, and belonging. Through its movement between past and present, body and land, Snyder’s poem becomes not just an observation of the outback but an echo of its enduring song.

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