Over the west side of this mountain,
that’s lyrebird country.
I could go down there, they say, in the early morning,
and I’d see them, I’d hear them.
Ten years, and I have never gone.
I’ll never go.
I’ll never see the lyrebirds—
the few, the shy, the fabulous,
the dying poets.
…No, I have never gone.
Some things ought to be left secret, alone;
some things—birds like walking fables—
ought to inhabit nowhere but the reverence of the heart.

from: Lyrebirds, by Judith Wright in Birds, 3rd ed., Angus and Robertson, 1978.