Public Locations of Denis Kevans' Work - Denis Rice

Have you seen your own Blue Mountains
That put galleries to shame,
Galleries of art and sculpture
That are proudest in their fame?
For the art of fern and flower,
And the sculpting of the stone,
Is an art no skill can master
But the Mountains’ skill alone.

In about the mid 1980s until sometime in about 2003, the above verse of a poem by Denis Kevans could be read in a bus shelter at the intersection of The Mall at Leura with the Great Western Highway.  These enchanting lines were inscribed on the bus shelter’s rear inside wall, superimposed on a mural depicting a Blue Mountains scenic view.  In about 2003, this bus shelter disappeared as part of the major upgrading, of several years’ duration it seems, of the Great Western Highway at Leura.  Hopefully this bus shelter will soon be rebuilt and reappear near its original location on the highway at Leura.

The preceding verse of this poem could be said to be equally enchanting:

Have you seen the waters dancing
In the torrents by the trails,
And the mist, in magic stillness,
Hanging down in silken veils?
Have you seen the ferns translucent
With the slanting, smiling sun,
And the silver edge of dawning
Up and down the cobwebs run?

Just inside the front door of the Conservation Hut, on the ridge above the Valley of the Waters at Wentworth Falls, is a large poster entitled: Blue Mountains National Park and Sydney’s Water Supply Prominently inscribed on this poster is the first verse of Denis’ poem Moss’s Gentle Fingers (also set to music by Denis Kevans): Where the moss’s gentle fingers paint the sleeping boulders green, I’ll walk in all my wisdom, where no mortal’s ever been. And where immortal trees stretch up their fingers to the sky, The moss will cool the water for the lyre-bird and I, the lyre-bird and I.

Denis sang all five verses of Moss’s Gentle Fingers at the official opening of this large poster and the accompanying display on the Blue Mountains natural environment, one Saturday morning in early December 2003.

Denis Kevans has written quite a few poems about birds, his most recent probably being Mend the Torn Air and Thunderbird(Rufous Whistler).  About 30 metres from the abovementioned sandstone plinth, on an interpretive sign entitled “Animals and Plants” – between the Echo Point Visitor Information Centre and the Drum Lookout at Echo Point – is the following extract from a poem by Denis Kevans:

The pirate honey-eaters spread
the pollen far and wide,

The golden dust of perfumed joy,
right down the mountain side.

Immediately above these lines of Denis, are perhaps the most famous lines of Henry Kendall’s poem Bellbirds:

And softer than slumber,
and sweeter than singing,

The notes of the bell-birds
are running and ringing.