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").
The Head-Spider
Where I lived once, a roller coaster's rangeof timber hills peaked just by our backyard cliffand cats undulated scream-driven round its..
© Les Murray
Bottles in the Bombed City
They gave the city a stroke. Its memoriesare cordoned off. They could collapse on you.Water leaks into bricks of the Workers' centuryand every..
© Les Murray
Vertigo
Last time I fell in a shower roomI bled like a tumbril dandyand the hotel longed to be rid of me.Taken to the town clinic, Idescribed how I tripped..
© Les Murray
Self and Dream Self
Routines of decaying timefade, and your waking lifegets laborious as science.You huddle in, becomingthe deathless younger selfwho will survive your..
© Les Murray
The Margin of Difference
One and one make two,the literalist said.So far they've made five billion,said the lateralist, or tentimes that, if you count the dead.
© Les Murray
The Cows on Killing Day
All me are standing on feed. The sky is shining.All me have just been milked. Teats all tingling stillfrom that dry toothless sucking by the chilly..
© Les Murray
Nursing Home
Ne tibi supersis:don't outlive yourself,panic, or break a hipor spit purée at the staffat the end of gender,never a happy ender -yet in the pastel..
© Les Murray
The Conversations
A full moon always rises at sunsetand a person is taller at night.Many fear their phobias more than death.The glass King of France feared he'd..
© Les Murray
I wrote a little haiku
I wrote a little haikutitled ‘The Springfields'Lead drips out ofa burning farm rail.Their Civil War.Critics didn't like it,said it was obscure -The..
© Les Murray
The farm terraces
Beautiful merciless workaround the slopes of earthterraces cut by curt hoeat the orders of hungeror a pointing lord.Levels eyed up to rhymecopied..
© Les Murray
The Holy Show
I was a toddler, wet-combedwith my pants buttoned to my shirtand there were pink and green lights, prettyin the day, a Christmas-tree partyup the..
© Les Murray
Ripe In The Arbours Of The Nose
Even rippled with sunthe greens of a citrus grove darkenlike ocean deepening from shore.Each tree is full of shade.A shadowy fast spiral throughand a..
© Les Murray
Science Fiction
I can travelfaster than lightso can youthe speed of thoughtthe only troubleis at destinationsour thought balloonsare coated invisibleno one there..
© Les Murray
Water-gardening in an Old Farm Dam
Blueing the blackened waterthat I'm widening with my spadeas I lever up water tussocksand chuck them ashore like sopping cometsis a sun-point..
© Les Murray
Ernest Hemingway and the Latest Quake
In fact the Earth never stops moving.Northbound in our millimetric shovingwe heap rainy Papua ahead of uswith tremor and fumarole and shearbut: no..
© Les Murray
Quintets for Robert Morley
Is it possible that hyper-ventilating up ParnassusI have neglected to pay tributeto the Stone Age aristocracy?I refer to the fat.We were probably the..
© Les Murray
Spermaceti
I sound my sight, and flexing skeletons eddyin our common wall. With a sonic bolt from the fragrantchamber of my head, I burst the lives of someand..
© Les Murray
The Broad Bean Sermon
Beanstalks, in any breeze, are a slack church paradewithout belief, saying trespass against us in unison,recruits in mint Air Force dacron, with..
© Les Murray
Panic Attack
The body had a nightmare.Awake. No need of the movie.No need of light, to keep hipsand shoulders rotating in bedon the gimbals of wet eyes.Pounding..
© Les Murray
The Moon man
Shadowy kangaroos moved offas we drove into the top paddockcoming home from a weddingunder a midnightish curd skythen his full face cleared:Moon man..
© Les Murray
The New Hieroglyphics
In the World language, sometimes calledAirport Road, a thinks balloon with a gondolaunder it is a symbol for speculation.Thumbs down to ear and..
© Les Murray
Towards The Imminent Days (Section 4)
In my aunt's house, the milk jug's beaded crochet covertickles the ear. We've eaten boiled things with butter.Pie spiced like islands, dissolving in..
© Les Murray
The Quality Of Sprawl
Sprawl is the qualityof the man who cut down his Rolls-Royceinto a farm utility truck, and sprawlis what the company lacked when it made repeated..
© Les Murray
Travels With John Hunter
We who travel between worldslose our muscle and bone.I was wheeling a barrow of earthwhen agony bayoneted me.I could not sit, or lie down,or stand..
© Les Murray
The Instrument
Who reads poetry? Not our intellectuals;they want to control it. Not lovers, not the combative,not examinees. They too skim it for bouquetsand magic..
© Les Murray