by Les Murray
Poverty is still sacred. Christian 390
Poxes of the Sun or of the mind 632
Preindustrial haze. The white sky rim 291
Present and still present don’t yet add up to time 369
Prone on its wrists, beige Bear 492
Propped sheets of bark converging 526
Prose is Protestant-agnostic 341
Proud heart, since the light of making lace 162
Puritans reckoned the cadavers 547
Rain. Its breath a liquid dust 538
Rasp and whistle 635
Rectangular mansion, sunburnt pink, 667
Refugees, derelicts – but why classify 521
Religions are poems. They concert 265
Remember how I used 184
Repeatedly out of grazed plateaux, the Dividing 224
Resolute, you come to a cell 536
Right in that house over there 593
Ripple, pond, liftoff fly. Unlid the outswallowing snorter 364
Rose-red city in the angles of a cut-up 482
Rubbish! As the twig is bent the tree does not grow, at all 332
Said the conjuror Could I have afforded 603
Saint Vincent de Paul, old friend 55
Scarlet as the cloth draped over a sword 512
Science now conclusively proves 684
Sea-perch over paddocks. Dunes. Salt light everywhere low down 332
Seedy drytime Feb 297
Seeing the telegram go limp 30
Seen from the high cutting 650
September morning. White is salient 639
Sex is a Nazi. The students all knew 393
Sexburga Drive is a steep mud lane 632
Shadowy kangaroos moved off 520
Shake the bed, the blackened child whimpers 437
Shallow at brinks 537
Sheep are like legal wigs 530
Sitting round in the Grand Hotel 483
Six little terns 648
Sleeping-bagged in a duplex wing 355
Sliced bread (sic) 662
Sliding round the corner on gravel 593
Snow on the day before Anzac 213
So drunk he kept it at tens – and the bloody thing lost 117
So it’s back to window shopping 302
So we’re sitting over our sick beloved engine 170
Some comb oil, some blow air 320
Some of us primary producers, us farmers and authors 394
Someone naked with you 536
Sorting clothes for movie costume 620
Spacefarers past living planetfall 376
Speeding home from town 656
Sprawl is the quality 182
Stale pasture, midsummer 130
Stalk’s so unlike every other flight, or walk 376
Starting a dog, in the past-midnight suburbs, for a laugh 208
Starting to realise, blaming sergeant majordom 582
Still ask me about adult stuff 544
Stone statues of ancient waves 609
Stopped 84
Stopped by an earthquake on the North Coast line 424
Storeys over storeys without narrative 564
Streaming, a hippo surfaces 448
Surmounting my government’s high evasions 420
Suspended archery of night 679
Take back Bohemia, Havel; take back the name 406
Tall sails went slack, so high did Nobbys stand 577
Terra cotta of old rock undergirds 583
That country seemed one great park 514
That house on the riverbank 530
That numinous healer who preached Saturnalia and paradox 391
That slim creek out of the sky 204
That was the Iron Age all right 474
That wasn’t horses: that was 556
That weak word the Battlers 532
That winter. We missed her stark face 587
That’s the choice: most 323
The absolute blue ocean is scaled and smoothed 405
The air has sides, in a house 539
The air has states, not places 555
The body had a nightmare 596
‘The boss at home, Missus?’ A man couldn’t tell suitors from buyers 64
The bulldozer stands short as a boot on its heel-high ripple soles 191
The calm couple have no objection 457
The carpenter could have stayed 536
The children pouring down 448
The civil white-pawed dog who’d strain 479
The cones of the Wollemi pine 541
The conquest of fire-culture 419
The coral tree grows 664
The day I slept like a dolphin 493
The dead man lay, nibbled, between 622
The Easter rains are late this year 289
The edge of the forest, hard smoke beyond the paddocks 115
The fancy rider sent his Texan boots 67
The first night of my second voyage to Wales 54
The five-limbed Only One 378
The forest, hit by modern use 180
The Governor and the seer are talking at night in a room 116
The great airliner has been filled 524
The great feral novel 616
The house has stopped its desperate travelling 578
The houses those suburbs could afford 447
The Iliad of peace began 374
The impress of a whelk 406
The king of honour, louder than of England 43
The lemon sunlight poured out far between things 457
The long-limbed hills recline high 282
The man applying rules to keep me out 168
The mansard roof of the Barrier Industrial Council’s 211
The masses encroach on all of bare, and grow 365
The men of my family danced a reel with sugar 94
The miles-high bubble civility 334
The New England Highway was formed 261
The Nineteenth Century. The Twentieth Century 174
The northern shore used to be framed up 403
The octopus is dead 666
The oldest tree in Europe’s lost 150
The one whose eyes 553
The paddocks shave black 395
The past lives in a timber house 546
The pelican of urban myth swooping 405
The people are eating dinner in that country north of Legge’s Lake 137
The poor were fat and the rich were lean 343
The power of three China pear trees 243
The red serpent of cattle, that eclipsed the old dreaming serpents 327
The Rosary in Turkish, and prayers for the Sultan 313
The sea smooths a page of its folio 148
The sex of a stallion at rest 590
The smallest girl 652
The sound of a perfect Masaman shot 641
The staff of life 674
The stars are filtering through a tree 521
The sun tunes out stars 504
The tall Wood twins 501
The tidal wind through Drummond’s gorge 352
The train coming on up the Coast 569
The verb in a Sanscrit or Farsi 560
The very slight S of an adze handle 527
The walls of the country this year, the forest escarpments 33
The widow handing out 642
The wish to be right 589
The word goes round Repins 28
The working class, the working class 304
The worldwide breath of Catching Up 174
Their speech is a sense of place 73
Theory has done this 534
There are rental houseboats down the lakes now 255
There is no Reynard fox. Just foxes 359
There is nothing about it. Much science fiction is set there 153
There’s the other great arch eastward, with its hanging highways 171
These days that we’re apart 668
These lagoons, these watercourses 160
The
se were no leaders, but they were first 325
They gave the city a stroke. Its memories 452
They have walked out as far as they can go on the prow of the continent 167
They’ve had so many jobs 622
Things were not better 456
Thinking my old thought in the eye-stinging dark 81
Thirstland talc light 481
This autumn grove, in the half world 621
This deep in the year, in the frosts of then 285
This house, in lattice to the eaves 568
This is for spring and hail, that you may remember 8
This is the big arrival 519
This is the hour the Crucified Bludger is fed 83
This is the nadir of the story 537
This police car with a checkered seam 624
Those conventions of the trade 195
Those estuaries of the east coast 488
Those years trapped in a middling cream town 337
Three a.m., Tiger Bay. In the only 135
Tiles are mostly abstract 315
Tiny spinnakers 668
To break the Judaeo-Christian mould was his caper 269
To go home and wear shorts forever 233
To reach your watershed country 380
To revisit the spitfire world 210
Toll. You are part of the toll 343
Tom Fisher was my Grail King 465
Towards the end of the long Australian peace 24
Towers of swell fabric 274
Traditional costume puts you 503
Tree shadows, longer now, lie 584
Trees from modern times don’t bear 615
Tuckett. Bill Tuckett. Telegraph operator, Hall’s Creek 213
Twitching the curtain aside 638
Two cars, converging by chance 580
Two hundred years, and the bars 309
Two racing boats seen from the harmonic railing 235
Two women were characters, continually 445
Two women, a mother in black trouser suit 674
Unchinked log cabins, empty now, or stuffed with hay 312
Under eagle worlds each fixed in place 356
Unexpected among Rotterdam’s 493
Upasara, the heifer after first mating 55
Uphill in Melbourne on a beautiful day 435
Upward, cheeping, on huddling wings 335
Upwind on Sandy Creek, cooking 69
Us all on sore cement was we 366
Us, perching on sewn vinyl bums 676
Verandah shops with history 654
Vertical war, north of my early childhood 520
Walking on that early shore, in our bodies 228
Was any ruler ever a twin? 542
Watching from the barn the seedlight and nearly-all-down 93
Water like a shambles of milk 664
Watermelon rinds around the house 319
We are spared the Avenues of Liberation 533
We are the Australians. Our history is short 388
We asked How old will you be 470
We came because here were no politics 532
We came from the Ice Age 438
We didn’t see much Depression 676
We dreamed very wide awake 215
We had followed the catwalk upriver 398
We have bought the Forty Acres 128
We have spoken of the Action 113
We landed through a Southerly Buster 594
We never heard what my mate heard 619
We ought to hang cutout hawk shapes 306
We shell down on the sleeping-branch. All night 355
We were at dinner in Soho 615
We who travel between worlds 453
We’re driving across tableland 509
Weathered blond as a grass tree, a huge Beatles haircut 201
Went down to Wall Street 629
What are the sights of our town 79
What are you doing now, Les 468
What did they get for England 592
What did you see in the walnut? 640
What woman wouldn’t camp out, in trousers 685
What year was the very best Mallee Show? 605
What’s in who for you 538
Whatever sanctifies itself draws me 585
Whatever the great religions offer 591
When Dad and I first drove to Sydney 480
When I ran to snatch the wires off our roof 122
When January is home to visit her folks 295
When Midas, no less deserving of mercy or better for 401
When Sydney and the Bush first met 123
When tar roads came 611
When the flag of the pool of blood 499
When the magazine of rising suburbs 563
When the pub’s ground floor 641
When we saw human dignity 227
When we were all servants 531
When yellow leaves the sky 485
Where humans can’t leave and mustn’t complain 389
Where I lived once, a roller coaster’s range 449
Where two or three 102
Where will Australia be held 411
Which spawned more civilisations 630
White grist that turned people black 387
White mongrel I hate snow 495
White, towering, polished as an urn 353
Who reads poetry? Not our intellectuals 457
Who remembers the bitter 527
Why does God not spare the innocent? 538
Willy Wagtail 344
Winters at home brought wind 22
With clutch-slip and tappet-noise 99
With modern transport, everywhere you go 347
With my mouldy felt hat and my coat pinned shut 312
Women made the gardens, in my world 512
x times y marks the spot 618
Yellow rimming the ocean 643
You are what you have got 543
You can send for my breakfast now, Governor 47
You can’t have everything, I said as we drank tea 305
You ride on the world-horse once 77
You rose climbing up 533
You’ve just resigned from judging 576
Young parents, up at dawn, working. Their first child can’t 294
Your conquest of the world 598
INDEX OF TITLES
1901 531
1921 532
1941 532
1960 Brought the Electric 669
1961 532
1980 in a Street of Federation Houses 250
1981 533
2001 533
A
A Brief History 388
A Countryman 531
A Denizen 666
A Deployment of Fashion 466
A Dialect History of Australia 562
A Dog’s Elegy 479
A Frequent Flyer Proposes a Name 632
A Lego of Driving to Sydney 427
A Levitation of Land 567
A Public Figure 269
A Reticence 453
A Retrospect of Humidity 203
A Riddle 501
A Shrine House 546
A Skirl for Outsets 148
A Stage in Gentrification 424
A Stampede of the Sacrifice 582
A Study of the Nude 536
A Torturer’s Apprenticeship 337
A Verb Agreement 498
A Walk with O’Connor 30
Accordion Music 332
Aircraft Stressed-skin Blowout Mid-Pacific 334
Airscapes 555
All of Half Way 658
Amanda’s Painting 450
An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow 28
An Australian Legend 517
An Era 343
An Immortal 200
Angophora Floribunda 514
Animal Nativity 374
Antarctica 340
Anthropomorphics 169
Apsley Falls 543
Aqualung Shinto 89
Araucaria Bidwilli 331
&n
bsp; Ariel 335
Art History: The Suburb of Surrealls 215
As Country Was Slow 608
As Night-Dwelling Winter Approaches 584
Asparagus Bones 481
Aspects of Language and War on the Gloucester Road 275
At Min-Min Camp 258
At the Aquatic Carnival 235
At the Falls 515
At the Opera 638
At the Swamping of Categories 499
At the Widening of a War 553
At Thunderbolt’s Grave in Uralla 261
At University 547
Atlantic Pavements 618
Aurora Prone 457
Australian Love Poem 416
Autumn Cello 506
B
Barker Unchained 586
Barrenjoey 319
Bats’ Ultrasound 355
Beasts of the City 678
Being Spared the Inquests 660
Below Bronte House 448
Bench Seats 674
Bent Water in the Tasmanian Highlands 177
Best Western 457
Big Bang 527
Big Rabbit at the Verandah 659
Big Shame 480
Bird Signatures 668
Birds in Their Title Work Freeholds of Straw 56
Birthplace 593
Black Belt in Martial Arts 565
Blood 19
Blowfly Grass 447
Blue Roan 342
Bluelookout Mountain 604
Blueprint II 592
Bollywood Video 676
Boöpis 71
Bottles in the Bombed City – Manchester 452
Bread Again 674
Brief, That Place in the Year 553
Bright Lights on Earth 596
Brown Suits 620
Burning Want 429
Buttress on a High Cutting 613
C
Cattle Ancestor 360
Cattle Egret 361
Cattle-Hoof Hardpan 615
Cave Divers Near Mount Gambier 307
Cell DNA 370
Chanson 504
Cherries from Young 623
Child Logic 652
Church 589
Clan-Sized Night Chanting 673
Closer Links with Sunraysia 483
Clothing as Dwelling as Shouldered Boat 526
Cockspur Bush 357
Comete 435
Company 102
Contested Landscape at Forsayth 419
Cool History 540
Coolongolook Timber Mill 463
Corniche 395
Cotton Flannelette 437
Cowyard Gates 154
Crankshaft 382
Creeper Habit 129
Creole Exam 529
Croc 624
Cumulus 224
Cuttlefish 376
Cycling in the Lake Country 102
D
D.C. 542
Daylight Cloth 639
Dead Trees in the Dam 392
Deaf Language 445
Death From Exposure 587
Death Words 61
Deer on the Wet Hills 375
Definitions 606
Demo 444
Diabetica 657
