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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..

Childhood sleeps in a verandah roomin an iron bed close to the wallwhere the winter over the railingswelled the blind on its timber boomand splinters..

When yellow leaves the skythey pipe it to the housesto go on making redand warm and floral and brownbut gradually people tire of it,return it inside..

At full tilt, air gleamed -and a window-struck kingfisher,snatched up, lay on my palmstill beating faintly.Slowly, a tinctureof whatever..

Blats booted to blatantdubbing the avenue direwith rubbings of Sveinn Forkbeardleading a black squall of Harleyswith Moe Snow-Whitebeard andPossum..

In the painting, I'm seated in a shield,coming home in it up a shadowy river.It is a small metal boat lined in eggshelland my hands grip the gunwale..

We're driving across tablelandsomewhere in the world;it is almost bare of trees.Upland near void of featuresalways moves me, but not to thought;it..

I am lived. I am died.I was two-leafed three times, and grazed,but then I was stemmed and multiplied,sharp-thorned and caned, nested and..

Scarlet as the cloth draped over a sword,white as steaming rice, blue as leschenaultia,old curried towns, the frog in its green human skin;a..

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..

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..

From the metal poppythis good blast of trancearriving as shock, private cloudburst blazing down,worst in a boarding-house greased tub, or a barrack..

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..

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..

The lemon sunlight poured out far between thingsinhabits a coolness. Mosquitoes have subsided,flies are for later heat.Every tree's an auburn giant..

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..

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..

All the air conditioners now slackentheir hummed carrier wave. Once againwe've served our three months with remissionsin the steam and dry iron of..

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..

Sleeping-bagged in a duplex wingwith fleas, in rock-cleft or buildingradar bats are darkness in miniature,their whole face one tufty crinkled earwith..

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..

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..

Once played to attentive facesmusic has broken its frameits bodice of always-weak lacesthe entirely promiscuous artpours out in public..

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..

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..