Les Murray

Come our one great bushfirepigs, sty-released, declined to quittheir pavements of gravel and shit.Other beasts ran headlong, whipping off with genitals pinched high.Human mothers taught their infants creek-dipping.Fathers galloped, gale-blown blaze strippinggrass at their heels and on by too swift . . . . Continue Reading »

The trick was to beasleep before the rail signalmanwhispered in with his latestgirl off the midnight trainotherwise the murmuringswould go on and onwhatever the pair did—at waking they’d be gone.Those days when boys called younames that rarely impressedthe girls, who danced, calling youlike . . . . Continue Reading »

Suspended archery of nightkeeps a resplendent distanceslowly circling the Earth.Just odd long spittlestreaks from dark iron jaws.—Les . . . . Continue Reading »

Jesus was a healernever turned a patient downnever charged coin or conversionstarted off with dust and spittlethen re-tuned lives to patternsimply by his attentionoften surprised himself a littleby his unbounded abilityJesus was a healerreattached his captor’s earopened senses, unjammed . . . . Continue Reading »

One who’d been my friendly Granwas now mostly barred from me,accomplishing her hard deathon that strange farm miles away. My mother was nursing herso we couldn’t be at home.Dad had to stay out there, milking,appearing sometimes, with his people,all waiting for the . . . . Continue Reading »

Back to the hospital again,on the meals list, on the drip,in for yet another stayover an artificial kneeput in to replace aborn bone sideways . . . . Continue Reading »

Sliced bread (sic) a centimeter thick staling on forty surfaces fit for soggy sandwiches real bread excels all this high top, Vienna, cob baguettes three times daily breads poignant as a sob Jewish rye and German brothers from the hob Tall grass waving gluten foreshadowed cultivation its unbloody . . . . Continue Reading »

Stone statues of ancient waves tongue like dingoes on shore in time with wave-glitter on the harbor but the shake-a-leg chants of the Eora are rarely heard there any more and the white man who drew their nasals as footprints on five-lined paper lies flat away up Pitt Street,lies askew on gravel . . . . Continue Reading »

Rome 17 October 2010 Mary MacKillop, born 1842, what are the clergy giving you on my birthday, Mother Mary? Sainthood? So long after God did? Independence? But you’re your own Scot. The job of Australian icon? Well yes. Black flies in the buggy. Bush pianos. The cheek-sawing wimple in summer: . . . . Continue Reading »

What did you see in the walnut? Horses all harnessed criss-cross And a soldier wearing the credits Of his movie like medal ribbons. An egg there building a buttery Held itself aloft in its hands— The horse-straps then pulled the nut shut. . . . . Continue Reading »