John Durack: Nanette Roland, who needs no introduction, I don't think. Thank you Michael, for bringing those wishes from the other side of Australia for us.
Nanette Roland:
Hello. Well you've all been so good, you frighten me. But I've got something to say and I want to say it. And also, Bill stole my thunder by quoting poetry, but never mind.
Why do I ask about the song of long past years?
I am, I breathe. Do I not hear the tune?
The cloud hangs lightly, the poppy burns brightly,
The flute waits. Let your years sing, I hear them already.
And the flute song for me, from Noni and Bill, has been a great friendship of warmth and generosity and hospitality, and consolation. And when I was very sick a few years ago, someone said to me, 'Now you'll know who your friends are, and you'll find they're very few.' Well that wasn't true, I got great support, but the most of all was from Noni and Bill, and I thank them, deeply.
And I feel today the celebration for Noni and Bill is really the celebration of a love story, a 20th century love story. So I'll finish with a 20th century love poem.
“The Lovers
Look at those cranes in a wide arc
The clouds that were assigned to them
Accompany them as they flew away from one life
Into another life.
At the same height and with the same haste,
Both of them only seem to be there by chance.
That thus the cranes share with the crowd
A lovely sky, through which they briefly fly
That therefore neither should linger here
Nor see anything else
Save the swaying of the other in the wind
Which both sense, who now in flight
Lie side by side.
So the wind may lighten off
Into nothingness.
If they do not pass away, and stay together,
So long nothing can touch these two
So long they can be chased away from every place
Where rains threaten, or shots sound out.
So under sun and moon's variegated faces
They fly away, each enthralled by the other,
Wither away nowhere, away from whom, away from all.”
Thank you.
APPLAUSE
