by Les Murray
or credit most advances
you sit and mourn
links of your self-raising chain.
CLAN-SIZED NIGHT CHANTING
Best sleeps hitching through
desert country were always
just out beyond dust-throw
of the road, deep enough in
grass to block rare headlights.
As you burnt one spinifex
tussock to make camp by
you’d hear just your blood,
yet when you’d slept a short tilt
of the Galaxy, there’d be chanting
of intersex timbre, off somewhere.
No glow of fire, though,
in any direction.
They had to be aware of you
but never shifted volume
or came to check you out.
And you felt no fear
only shyness at the notion,
as the long lines rose
parading diminuendo down.
BREAD AGAIN
The staff of life
has become
the lunch of staff
BENCH SEATS
Two women, a mother in black trouser suit,
polished loafers and a neck-stream of chain,
daughter in black jacket, ironed jeans,
polished loafers and a neck-stream of chain.
The sun sits beside them, way west up the Harbour.
On my own seat, a facing girl the age
of the daughter opposite is trying to strike up
conversation with the pair. Her speech has the
slight honk of a Downs syndrome accent
and the sun dazzles her, from up the Harbour.
That’s. My favourite kinda jacket. I like
the crosses you got on. Too. Flat mirror metal
insignia that resemble glass.
No response is directed to her, but a whispered
grimace of mirth is shared between the women.
More from the lone girl gets scrutiny, not politeness
and suddenly both women exit to the corridor
where sunlight drives between buildings and their knees.
Who am I to moralise? Perhaps they have no English.
Only three other passengers face up-harbour,
One reads the paper, one dozes against the sun.
Only when both elegant women return
to their seats does their sidelong focus reveal
at my shoulder the man whose hiss recalled them,
and the Downs girl wears the remnants of an expression.
GROOMING WITH NAIL CLIPPERS
After barefoot, grump and gomp
the toenail clipper is echoing
itself in the wood floor, trimming
impact ridges off outer nails.
The oblique rudder lever mis-thumbed
against its chisel opposite
crimps awry, gets re-occluded
biting corners off middle dabs.
Splitch! The entire plier skimming
under the sofa – up-heave sofa
to recover crossed arms askew
and redeploy to crop some more,
embracing your knees in opposition
you show inner thigh, and lift
toe-horn turrets which will grit
the flooring with grey beetle bix.
THE THIRTIES
We didn’t see much Depression
cutting bread and mutton to feed
men earning their family dole by tramping
the roads to find work and not breed.
Two local roads three miles apart
cockies spent three years joining up
with crowbars and shovels. Eight
other miles were hoof-churned to slop
by bullock teams, and no one could pass.
The monster logs stuck in their way
so the council gravelled the surface
and the beasts’ hooves bled, grinding away
and lorries drove out into the timber
up creek beds, climbing over black stone
and the teams fetched billets for loading.
None of the cutters joined a union
or talked freedom. Independent, was the word
with all but the queer plainclothes fellow
who never grasped the work, and got
fat envelopes in dark Government yellow.
BOLLYWOOD VIDEO
Us, perching on sewn vinyl bums
in the Raj, at our tables, as
more of us come bearing curries.
The wall video is tireless with drums
as its chorus-line train
stretches in along the station,
storming brakes under strain
purging cumulus of elation.
All doors undog, and troupes alight
rocking like gold-scales, as if weighing
saffron with plump humid hands
and there’s the head throb, in whiskers,
boiled shirt and the undulant wail
of teen-voiced senior women.
SAVOURY
Brown gravy, brown gravy
should be sold by the bottle;
drink savoury, not sickly,
let your clothes catch the dottle.
UP TO THE GREEK CLUB
Clung! and the shivery ascensor
climbs to the restaurant floor
and we, family, take a window table
above vast swelling park trees.
Fifty-five years I’ve been coming here.
This was my escape, through cuisine,
from corned beef and widower’s cooking.
Of a thousand Australian Greek cafes
back then, almost none served Greek food.
This, though, was tzatzikí and panórama
yet steadier than chefdom:
souvlaki was on every day
and intellect rose to it from suburbs,
making friends and moves, till Clung!
the lift sank under vogue and aspiration.
This room, now sea-cave blue, flickered
with bow-tie waiters shouting the serves:
mia taramasalata! avoglémono!
some of us got by on oil and bread
and I never took the white ship to Athens:
Not in Zorba’s time, nor Farandouri’s.
Strong ethos from ancient times abashed me.
Double-breasted paratroop-shooters
I now see are all gone.
Of two senior dramatists, one hugs me.
The family and I enjoy pods of octopods
and other mezedes, and lamb and Persia’s
best conquest of Greece, true rice pudding,
and we chat on over coffee hits, hearing
odd metaphors rev on the torrid street below.
BEASTS OF THE CITY
Pioneers
shot their dinners and their fears
gentry were red in stag and boar
shooting hippo for the roar
turning tall giraffe to rissoles
shredding buffalo with missiles
but as true wilderness prey ran down
the hunt went sour, and in town
people talked rarity and compassion
as wild things grew rare, they urbanised
humans tardily realised:
possums quit the bush unaided
but charismatic fauna were still traded
tigers de-sinewed or Whipsnaded
orangs and howlers got sold with their forests
infective flying foxes bred like tourists
and golf course antelope and kangaroo
fattened the crocodile they drew
children, abandoning outdoors for towers,
spent glassed-in hours
combatting monstrous intestine
jag-toothed of maw and spine
while factory protein spiced with clones
grew beef or mutton, milk or bones
and th
e founts of these grazed free lifelong
lawnmowing, and drinking the billabong.
WHALE SOUNDING
Enormous whale
vertically diving,
thick roof tail
spilling salt rain
off onto wallowing
upthrust all around,
bubba dog down.
THE GENGHIS FIRMAMENT
Suspended archery of night
keeps a resplendent distance
slowly circling the Earth.
Just odd long spittle
streaks from dark iron jaws.
THE CARE
Carers are fifteen years younger
than you. They stop in for your boy,
they shower your mother not looking,
they unpeg and bring in the laundry.
Carers have learned the bad-smelling
jobs, and soak them as they chat.
Brown pivot stains shame a veteran –
Old age is eventually a cat
which starts on the brain of its prey
so the words come with a delay
and finally hardly at all.
Children, years younger again,
always knew the nuance of the words,
the scratchy pants, and the Latin.
Grown ups twist as the modern
approaches down gravel, down the flight-plan,
the airy and the arch,
the judgemental in starch
ampoule-filled as their hatches open.
More friends of mine now face that one
so glory to Nurse Cavell, to Nurse Kenny,
Doctor Flynn, and the sans-frontiersmen:
I brace for my turn of white cotton
and my headstone POET SO FAR then.
HIGH FOLIAGE
Leaves absorbing light
steep it in syrups down
into the buried world.
Leaves of a forest
feasting on the Sun.
Mind assembling below
in a language of levels
strung through soil, roots, grit,
chemistries being messaged
across moist fungi web.
Foliage is loose flight
around the top of orders:
a branch to wither,
a giant fig to fruit,
flowering to be started.
Greenest in blue and red
leaves tread on the sky
lending light its flavours
as the blind computer plays
between core and star.
JESUS WAS A HEALER
Jesus was a healer
never turned a patient down
never charged coin or conversion
started off with dust and spittle
then re-tuned lives to pattern
simply by his attention
often surprised himself a little
by his unbounded ability
Jesus was a healer
reattached his captor’s ear
opened senses, unjammed cripples
sent pigs to drown delirium
cured a shy tug at his hem
learned to transmit resurrection
could have stood more Thank You
for God’s sake, which was his own
Jesus was a healer
keep this quiet, he would mutter
to his learners. Copy me
and they did to a degree
still depicted on church walls
cure without treatment or rehearsals.
THE FLUTE
Black night jittered sallow
blue along the south horizon
and rippled in our windows
an eerie silence in motion.
An hour, and trees in spasm
of wind as daybreak grew
pelted each other with wreckage.
Stark rain whitened beyond
the near hills, then inside them.
A whole gale bombed straight down;
except indoors, it cancelled
all the geography to vapour
and a roar like tumbling furniture
and the rain crashed off eaves.
The TV blacked and nibbled
mini coloured tape inside people
but outage didn’t happen.
By midmorning in sun
and sweated flywire the garden
was re-brimming pond and cloud-lift
and the clear core of the rain gauge
drawn out, overspilled its
metrics like a champagne flute
raised to the season.
THE MURDERS OF WOMEN
One woman a week
dies at the hands
of her husband or Other.
One woman a week
by violence in our culture.
The messageless holiday
that draws a dog’s nose
in among civilian armies
and taps TV’s billions
from the talk of senior women,
to the wigless divorce
not even needed now
and the children dumped on parents,
the charges screamed one night
or thousands. The one spill
after which a suit burned
or the gashes of headlights
through the car at speed –
How suddenly change came,
how often a half accident.
It brings the blue sergeants
to push down a head
still full of a war
that will feed guess-writers.
One woman. Fifty-two women.
UNDER THE LUBE OIL
Science now conclusively proves
that the skeleton under Leicester’s
sainted car park was Richard III.
Being a Ricardian suits me.
If Tudor had gone bootless home
his son the queen-killer might have
worn out his galligaskins in Wales
and England remained Catholic.
The year we wintered on Culloden
legend gave us a king of our own
from five centuries earlier, also
buried under a petrol station
halfway down the Inverness road.
His name was Duncan
slain in battle by Macbeth
not Princess Gruoch’s guest bed.
Ah William, you marvel of spin.
WINTER GARDEN
Pigeon whirr
pigeon zoom
walking the upper
khaki parterre
picking up windfall
sticks to hurl
down gully for flood
to sog and swirl away
sticks to lodge high
limbs to fall back
wirraway crack!
pigeon zoom
grass pheasant whirr
GOTHS IN LEIPZIG
Black was pouring out
of the Kaiser’s mighty station,
kohl mingling with floral:
it was the Goths, dressed not prole
but precarian, crossing
sunken tramway of the Platz
in balmoral and crinoline
besoming the pavement up
into the city’s Kultur precinct,
Goths of half Europe,
clad in gilet and swart ruff
leading small chimney children,
bolero and culottes and
gold-buttoned mariachi pants,
nothing military or uniform,
chest hair T-shirted in voile
strolling in the rung clangour
of Sankt Nikolai post Mass,
Goths, parading not marching
a funereal insouciance,
older tourists silencing qualms
at any European unison.
MARYANNE BUGG
What woman wouldn’t camp out, in trousers
for a man pinched and bearded as the nine
lions on the courthous
e coat of arms
with their tongues saying languish and lavish?
In winter, he was Fred who worked down
the Manning for Murrays, but come warm days
he was Thunderbolt on high New England
who took her from slouching white men
and white women’s dreadful eyes.
The New England future highway was formed
by Christian men who reckoned
Adam and Eve should have been
sodomized for the curse of work
they brought on humankind
but roads were game reserves to Thunderbolt
when a bridge was a leap on a horse
and wheels laboured, trundling thru splashways.
Tell Fred I need to be robbed Friday
or I’m jiggered! The game was half slapstick.
That German band that Thunderbolt
attended by a pregnant boy,
bailed up on Goonoo Goonoo:
Gentlemen, if you are that poor
I’ll refund your twenty pound, provided
a horse I mean to shake wins at Tenterfield.
And it did, arching its neck, and he did
by postal note at Warwick.
Hoch! Public relations by trombone.
INDEX OF FIRST LINES
A backstrapped family Bible that consoles virtue and sin 332
A beribboned question mark 545
A big bald head is asleep 605
A car is also 101
A chart, wider than the world 446
A clerk looks again at a photo 555
A cloister below 460
A coffee cart was travelling down the mountain 655
A complex iron finial-head 542
A drunk man in a rank shirt 520
A fact the gourmet 535
A full moon always rises at sunset 606
A ginger-biscuit kelpie dog 534
A grog-primed overseer, who later died 170
A human is a comet streamed in language far down time; no other 378
A llama stood in Hannover, with a man 581
A long narrow woodland with channels, reentrants, ponds 136
A long street of all blue windows 403
A man approaches the edge 516
A man coughs like a box 657
A man with a neutral face 588
A pair of breasts in a window 545
A primary teacher taking courses 416
A razor whetting silt and alluvium 524
A stupefying peak crack 526
