by Les Murray
A toddler’s scream 660
A warm stocking caught among limbs 578
A window glimmering in wheeltracked clay 331
A winter’s day of wind, and no horizon 30
A youth, rusty haired 660
Abounding white water 543
Across silvering cobble 535
Across the river 650
Adult songs in English 426
After a silver summer 453
After a windstorm, the first man 498
After barefoot, grump and gomp 675
After caramel airs of the sugar islands 599
After the Big Flood, we elected 301
After the last gapped wire on a post 149
After the war, and just after marriage and fatherhood 241
After Waterloo, the Channel 459
Afternoon, and the Short Giant takes his siesta 329
Against the darker trees or an open car shed 442
Ah, I was as soiled as money, old as rag 2
All day above the Japanese fleet 89
All days were work days at the farm 432
All me are standing on feed. The sky is shining. 367
All politeness, all endearments 529
All the air conditioners now slacken 203
All the Fergussons are black 522
Almost surprised to have been 425
Along our hills, before the first star 346
Along Sydney’s upraised finger 319
An aircraft-engined kewpie doll 543
An apricot star 544
An east-running valley where two hooded creeks make junction 281
An idea whistles with your lips 436
And entering on the only smooth road 225
And so we’ve come right round the sun 300
Angophora, rusty-shelled 613
Ar there, Ginger Meggs 532
Archie was a gun to shoot at biplanes 633
Around the hilly roads 586
As anywhere beyond the world 375
As I was going to Coleraine 658
As that monster the Twentieth Century 486
As the painter Sali Herman discerns 534
As usual up the Giro mountain 342
As we were rowing to the lakes 124
Asperges me hyssopo 561
At full tilt, air gleamed 624
At the edge of the tropics 423
At the hour I slept 56
Attended by thousands, the Sun is opening 501
August, and black centres expand on the afternoon paddock 163
Axe-fall, echo and silence. Noonday silence 3
Baby oyster, little grip 469
Back to hospital again 661
Back, in my fifties, fatter than I was then 404
Bang! it was autumn 298
Baron Samedi, leaving the House of Lords 472
Beanstalks, in any breeze, are a slack church parade 112
Beasts, cattle, have words, neither minor nor many 61
Beautiful merciless work 627
Beckoner of hotheads, brag-tester, lord of the demi-suicides 200
Below the moveable gardens of this shopping centre 200
Beside Anchor Flour school frocks dimmed with redknuckle soaps 379
Beside the odd gene 267
Best sleeps hitching through 673
Beyond the Divide 18
Beyond the human flat earths 340
Big leaves of the native tamarind 331
Big rabbit at the verandah 659
Black night jittered sallow 682
Black was pouring out 685
Blats booted to blatant 456
Blokes and sheilas, copping lip 558
Blueing the blackened water 410
Bluelookout is a tractor climb 604
Bralgu. Kata Tjuta. Lutana 562
Brief, that place in the year 553
Brisbane, night-gathered, far away 256
Brown gravy, brown gravy 677
Brutal policy 335
Buildings, like all made things 382
Bull elephants, when not weeping need, wander soberly alone 365
Bush and orchard forelands stop sheer 345
By its nobship sailing upside down 361
Carers are fifteen years younger 679
Castle scaffolding tall in moat 392
Ceremonial and truly ethnic 546
Cervantes. This one-strum pueblo 648
Chaplain General (R.C.) 556
Chatting, after the donation part 615
Chenille-skinned people are counting under the countryside 307
Cherries from Young 623
Childhood sleeps in a verandah room 236
Chinning the bar or Thirties concrete rim 322
CI: the detectives. After the age of belief 82
Citizens live in peace and honour 93
City where aircraft are hung 542
Clean water in the house 612
Climb out of mediaeval one-way 558
Cloudy night 594
Clung! and the shivery ascensor 677
Coming out of reflections 71
Crumpled in a coign I was milk-tufted with my suckling 364
Dad, this is none of your business 672
Dark stars that never fire 264
Darrambawli and all his wives, they came feeding from the south east 360
Days of asphalt-blue and gold 26
Dazzling blue eyes 33
Dear Dennis 273
Death gets into the suburbs, but sleek 597
Don’t die, Dad 430
Douglas MacArthur in a raccoon coat 502
Dousing the campfire with tea 427
Down a road padlocked now 463
Dream harbours Sin, and Innocence, and Magic 216
Dried nests in the overhanging limbs 401
Dried phlegm of lakes 102
Driving on that wide jute-coloured country 330
Driving up to visit April 506
Drove up to Hahndorf 643
Earth after sun is slow burn 362
Eavesdropping rain 36
Effete: a pose 606
Elites, levels, proletariat 218
Empty as a country town street 539
Empty rings when tapped give tongue 153
Enchantment creek underbank pollen, are the stiff scents he makes 357
Enormous whale 679
Even rippled with sun 600
Everyone was frightened of the sky 553
Everything except language 551
Explaining a cheese 545
Eye-and-eye eye an eye 358
Faith was a dream technology 525
Farm gates were sealed with tape 541
Farmer Cleve, gent., of the Hunter 245
Fashion ruled, but another queen reigned 533
Fawn high rise of Beijing 645
Fence beyond fence from breakfast 57
Fish, in their every body 359
Flashy wrists out of buttoned grass cuffs, feral whisky burning gravels 177
Floodwater from remote rains has spread out 240
Foiled hunters sulk homewards at dusk 128
Four captured a man. When he grasped what they meant to do 399
Four villages in Ireland 631
From a cinder in the far blue 531
From his high seat, an owner 671
From just on puberty, I lived in funeral 429
From the metal poppy 181
Full tilt for my Emperor and King, I 324
Fume-glossed, unhearably shrill 565
Gelibolu, Chanakkale 119
Gentrifical force, gentrifical force 598
Getting under way in that friendly suburb of balconies 326
Globe globe globe globe 528
Going to Rubuntja, the cattle-train. Banging two trailers 63
Good-looking young man 551
Gorgeous expansion of life 646
Grandfather’s grandfather rode down from New England 266
Grisaille of gristle lights, in a high eye of cells
373
Gross motor – co-ordination as a whistle subject 636
Half a day’s drive from Melbourne 636
Half-buried timbers chained corduroy 450
Happy the city that stayed poorish 540
Harry Reade, whom green students 639
Having run herself up out of 471
Having tacked loose tin panels 581
Haze went from smoke-blue to beige 567
He could envisage 317
He knocks at the door 525
He retains a slight ‘Martian’ accent, from the years of single phrases 412
He sits rejecting poems 489
He used the older Irish profanity 529
He was the family soldier 607
Hearing loss? Yes, loss is what we hear 259
Here is too narrow and brief 397
Higamus hogamus 399
High above its gloom 539
High mountain plateau edged 515
High on mountains worldwide they blow 548
High on the Gloucester road 554
Hitching blur to a caged propeller 220
Home is the first 379
Honey gave sweetness 328
Hoofed beasts are year-round fires 483
Hoon, hoon, that blowfly croon 530
How deep is the weatherfront of time 566
How did the Oriental 98
How good is their best 560
How Jews may have pioneered sculpture under Pharaoh’s knout 400
How many times did the Church prevent war 205
How old were you when you first 529
Human sacrifice has come back 552
Humans are flown, or fall 528
Hunched in the farm ute 653
Hungry that year 27
I am a policeman 86
I am an old book troglodyte 658
I am ever fresh cells who keep on knowing my name 371
I am listening for words the eldest 248
I am lived. I am died 357
I am older than my mother 185
I am seeing this: two men are sitting on a pole 117
I am the nest that comes and goes 377
I am the singular 370
I appear from the inner world, singular and many, I am 375
I came in from planting more trees 422
I came to Geneva 627
I can travel 617
I drove up to a young fox 547
I farmed in the land 147
I glory centennially slow- 356
I heard a cat bark like a fox 548
I must have heard of the Devil 440
I never heard such boasting 270
I permit myself to be 369
I saw from the road last time, our house 154
I sound my sight, and flexing skeletons eddy 372
I stand in a house of trees, and it is evening 6
I starred last night, I shone 414
I travel a road cut through time 275
I was a toddler, wet-combed 496
I was a translator at the Institute 134
I was a translator in the Institute back 408
I was good at the Common Room game 269
I was upstaged in Nottingham 555
I work all day and hardly drink at all 395
I wrote a little haiku 647
I’ll get up soon, and leave my bed unmade 3
Identity oversimplifies humans 540
If everything is receding 527
If this picture has survived 198
In 1980, in a street of Federation houses 250
In a precinct of liver stone, high 603
In a tacky glass-foundry yard, that is shadowy and bright 327
In Australia, a lone woman 466
In Cardiff, off Saint Mary’s Street 97
In fact the Earth never stops moving 511
In his frenzy to use 366
In May, Mary’s month 283
In my breast I’ve seen expire 442
In Rio, cobalt peaks wore 618
In the afternoon, a blue storm walloped and split 258
In the banana zone, in the poinciana tropics 238
In the city of Cargo 80
In the dream, Clarrie Dunn 554
In the hanging gorges 32
In the high cool country 10
In the late Nineteenth century 526
In the painting, I’m seated in a shield 450
In the shed it’s bumped verticals 525
In the stacked cities 586
In the World language, sometimes called 507
Inside Ayers Rock is lit 417
Intriguing, the oaten seethe 649
Is it possible that hyper- 175
Isabella Scott, born eighteen-oh-two 433
It began at dawn with fighter planes 1
It is patience and stalks in the wide house of cattle 60
It is possible that hyper- 175
It is possible the heights of this view are a museum 172
It is the great hall of Chlorine 477
It is the time of day 517
It seems that merciless human rearrangement 407
It was almost not born 373
It was built of things that must not mix 253
It’s French for sleeping 484
It’s like when, every year, flooding 579
It’s the opening of the surf season 292
It’s war! O angel of God, restrain 415
Jade suits pitched frameless up the sky 324
January, heat. Raw saplings stand like cattle 49
January, noon. The idle length of a street 2
Jesus was a healer 681
John Brown, glowing far and down 207
Juice-wet black steel 528
Just a few times in your life, you speak 270
Just for a moment 62
Just two hours after 31
Lank poverty, dank poverty 308
Last time I fell in a shower-room 669
Lead drips out of 630
Leaves absorbing light 680
Leaves from the ancient forest gleam 16
Left wing, right wing 244
Legs counterposed like six o’clock, her stretch 552
Liar made of leaf-litter, quivering ribby in shim 358
Life after death 592
Like a charging man, hit 487
Like a crack across a windscreen 510
Like appliqué on nothingness 561
Like summer silk its denier 329
Like vapour, the titanic scheme 352
Little boy blue, four hours till dawn 339
Little boy on a wet pavement 197
Little native-bee hives 645
Long before bridges, the old men who are hills now 404
Long before dawn, I rose by Paddy’s Lantern 21
Lorenzini’s, Vadim’s 130
Lotus leaves, standing feet above the water 257
Love is always an awarded thing 341
Luminous electric grist 596
Man was a mug, really 445
Many birds were making outcry 624
Many resemble Henry Sutton 318
Mary MacKillop, born 1842, 644
Match-head of groins 370
Maudie 65
Mein Führer, they called me Doctor Strangelove 518
Men around a submarine 670
Midmorning, September, and red tractors climb 37
Misericord. The Misery Cord 293
Moist black as sago pearls 614
Most Culture has been an East German plastic bag 424
Most white people had no relations 490
Mostly in the spring 638
Mother and type of evolution 418
Mrs Amp., it’s good to meet you 635
Muscles and torsoes of cloud 611
My big friend, I bow help 372
My cousin loved the violin 18
My father, widowed, fifty-six years old 12
My great grand-uncle invented haute couture. Tiens 587
My politic
s are like crop circles 538
My sleep, that had gone astray 435
My wife came out on the Goya 156
Ne tibi supersis 614
Needling to soil point 363
Nests of golden porridge shattered in the silky-oak trees 178
Night, as I go into the place of cattle 72
No mattress for the last levee shoveller 652
No more rice pudding. Pink coupons for Plume. Smokes under the lap 338
No. Not from me. Never 444
Not a latch or lock could hold 268
Not bowing, but a full thrown back upreach 366
Not from a weather direction 625
Not owning a cart, my father 184
Not usury, but interest. The cup slowed in mid-raise 166
Now that the west 118
Now the milk lorry is a polished submarine 252
Now the world has stopped. Dead middle of the year 288
Of adventures by palate 665
Old lampblack corners 669
Old Poley, pin bullock. The round one has left me slack here 65
Old Warwick, the husband, scratched his head 88
On a stone wall, adrift from their hive 146
On a summer morning after the war 563
On Bennelong Point 129
On Sabbath days, on circuit days 344
On the day of babyhood 497
On the long flats north of the river 531
On the road to the Nandewars 310
On vinegar and sour fish sauce Rome’s legions stemmed avalanches 240
On your wedding day, women were seated 462
Once played to attentive faces 462
One crepe-myrtle tree’s already mirrored 479
One who’d been my friendly Gran 665
One woman a week 683
Opium and vitriol and a plug of twist 271
Our farm is in the patched blue overlap 304
Our new motorway 608
Our ship was a rope-towered town 335
Our sleep-slow compeers, red and dun 361
Out above the level 321
Out in country like a Lincolnshire 522
Out of the Fifties, a time of picking your nose 108
Out through a long bright window 237
Outside the serious media, the violence of animals 169
Over the terra cotta 333
Over Westminster Bridge 602
P. Ovidius Naso 570
Paradises of limitation, charm 342
Perhaps a tribal kinship 495
Peter, you’re in the dictionary 473
Phillip was a kindly, rational man 44
Pig-crowds in successive, screaming pens 19
Pigeon whirr 684
Pioneers 678
Plain as wicker most of the year 641
Plaintive, she named herself Min 544
Pleasure-craft of the sprung rhythms, bed 164
Plucked chook we called Poultry, or Fowl 663
Poetry is apt to rise in you 505
Polish, at a constant curving interval, within 254
Ponderous cauldrons 654
Pork hock and jellyfish. Poor cock 565
