Section: «Poems»
Verse (ancient Greek ὁ στίχος — row, structure), a term in versification used in several meanings:
artistic speech organized by division into rhythmically commensurate segments; poetry in the narrow sense; in particular, it implies the properties of versification of a particular tradition ("antique verse", "Akhmatova's verse", etc.);
a line of poetic text organized according to a certain rhythmic pattern ("My uncle of the most honest rules").
Child Logic
The smallest girlin the wild kid's gangsubmitted her fingerto his tomahawk idea -It hurt bad, dropping off.He knew he'd gone too farand ran, herding..
© Les Murray
The Butter Factory
It was built of things that must not mix:paint, cream, and water, fire and dusty oil.You heard the water dreaming in its largekneed pipes, up from..
© Les Murray
Shower
From the metal poppythis good blast of trancearriving as shock, private cloudburst blazing down,worst in a boarding-house greased tub, or a barrack..
© Les Murray
Predawn In Health
The stars are filtering through a treeoutside in the moon's silent era.Reality is moving layer over layerlike crystal spheres now called laws.The..
© Les Murray
Comete
Uphill in Melbourne on a beautiful daya woman is walking ahead of her hair.Like teak oiled soft to fracture and swayit hung to her heels and seconded..
© Les Murray
Aurora Prone
The lemon sunlight poured out far between thingsinhabits a coolness. Mosquitoes have subsided,flies are for later heat.Every tree's an auburn giant..
© Les Murray
Performance
I starred that night, I shone:I was footwork and firework in one,a rocket that wriggled up and shotdarkness with a parasol of brilliantsand a peewee..
© Les Murray
Flowering Eucalypt In Autumn
That slim creek out of the skythe dried-blood western gum treeis all stir in its high reaches:its strung haze-blue foliage is dancingpoints down in..
© Les Murray
A Retrospect Of Humidity
All the air conditioners now slackentheir hummed carrier wave. Once againwe've served our three months with remissionsin the steam and dry iron of..
© Les Murray
Noonday Axeman
Axe-fall, echo and silence. Noonday silence.Two miles from here, it is the twentieth century:cars on the bitumen, powerlines vaulting the farms.Here..
© Les Murray
Bat's Ultrasound
Sleeping-bagged in a duplex wingwith fleas, in rock-cleft or buildingradar bats are darkness in miniature,their whole face one tufty crinkled earwith..
© Les Murray
The Aboriginal Cricketer
Mid-9th centuryGood-looking young manin your Crimean shirtwith your willow shieldup, as if to face spears,you're inside their men's Law,one church..
© Les Murray
Late Summer Fires
The paddocks shave blackwith a foam of smoke that stays,welling out of red-black wounds.In the white of a droughtthis happens. The hardcourt..
© Les Murray
Music To Me Is Like Days
Once played to attentive facesmusic has broken its frameits bodice of always-weak lacesthe entirely promiscuous artpours out in public..
© Les Murray
On Home Beaches
Back, in my fifties, fatter that I was then,I step on the sand, belch down slight horror to walka wincing pit edge, waiting for the pistol..
© Les Murray
The Dream Of Wearing Shorts Forever
To go home and wear shorts foreverin the enormous paddocks, in that warm climate,adding a sweater when winter soaks the grass,to camp out along the..
© Les Murray
Poetry And Religion
Religions are poems. They concertour daylight and dreaming mind, ouremotions, instinct, breath and native gestureinto the only whole thinking:..
© Les Murray
Inside Ayers Rock
Inside Ayers Rock is litwith paired fluorescent lightson steel pillars supporting the ceilingof haze-blue marquee clothhigh above the non-slip..
© Les Murray
Pigs
Us all sore cement was we.Not warmed then with glares. Not glutting mushunder that pole the lightning's tied to.No farrow-shit in milk to make us..
© Les Murray
The Meaning Of Existence
Everything except languageknows the meaning of existence.Trees, planets, rivers, timeknow nothing else. They express itmoment by moment as the..
© Les Murray
An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow
The word goes round Repins,the murmur goes round Lorenzinis,at Tattersalls, men look up from sheets of numbers,the Stock Exchange scribblers forget..
© Les Murray
London Crossfigured
crossfiguredcreeping with tramsand the artists on sundaysin the summerall ‘tracking Nature'in the suburbsItcould have been anyplacebut it wasn'tIt..
© Lawrence Ferlinghetti
In Goya's Greatest Scenes We Seem to See . . .
In Goya's greatest scenes we seem to seethe people of the worldexactly at the moment whenthey first attained the title of‘suffering humanity'They..
© Lawrence Ferlinghetti
[The Wounded Wilderness of Morris Graves]
The wounded wilderness of Morris Gravesis not the same wild westthe white man foundIt is a land that Buddha came uponfrom a different directionIt is..
© Lawrence Ferlinghetti
People Getting Divorced
People getting divorcedriding around with their clothes in the carand wondering what happenedto everyone and everythingincluding their otherpair of..
© Lawrence Ferlinghetti