Poem Hunter: Poems - Poets - Poetry

A faithless shepherd courted me,
He stole away my liberty.
When my poor heart was strange to men,
He came and smiled and stole it then.

When my apron would hang low,
Me he sought through frost and snow.
When it puckered up with shame,
And I sought him, he never came.

When summer brought no fears to fright,
He came to guard me every night.
When winter nights did darkly prove,
None came to guard me or to love.

I wish, I wish, but all in vain,
I wish I was a maid again.
A maid again I cannot be,
O when will green grass cover me?
...

'As a people we are now called Australians because a vast & lonely land
has touched us with her differences'
- George Ivan Smith, 1953 preface to For The Term Of His Natural Life

'it's noble to refuse to be added up or divided'
- Frank O'Hara

'In this dawn as in the first

...

I just want to wake beside you at seven,
When the world is still, and the light is uneven.
To watch you reach for the alarm, still lost in sleep,
Your hair messy, yet somehow, you're everything I want to keep.

I want to be the warmth when the day has drained you,
To be the silence that comforts, when nothing else will do.
But most of all, I want to whisper in the night,
Telling you "I love you, " until the dark feels right.


...

KILMARNOCK wabsters, fidge an' claw,
An' pour your creeshie nations;
An' ye wha leather rax an' draw,
Of a' denominations;
Swith to the Ligh Kirk, ane an' a'
An' there tak up your stations;
Then aff to Begbie's in a raw,
An' pour divine libations
For joy this day.


Curst Common-sense, that imp o' hell,
Cam in wi' Maggie Lauder; 1
But Oliphant 2 aft made her yell,
An' Russell 3 sair misca'd her:
This day Mackinlay 4 taks the flail,
An' he's the boy will blaud her!
He'll clap a shangan on her tail,
An' set the bairns to daud her
Wi' dirt this day.


Mak haste an' turn King David owre,
And lilt wi' holy clangor;
O' double verse come gie us four,
An' skirl up the Bangor:
This day the kirk kicks up a stoure;
Nae mair the knaves shall wrang her,
For Heresy is in her pow'r,
And gloriously she'll whang her

...

1.

CHORUS There is nothing stranger than man.
As if he were a storm
he strides through the waves
of the winter seas
and year after year
he wears down the oldest god,
earth herself, with his ploughshare.


...

You're my everything,
Beautiful as Spring's newborns,
Gentle as a goddess by her hearth.
Loving you feels like
Winning a thousand wars.

You're my everything,
Even beyond this mortal world.
We're like compass legs—
Drifted apart, yet always connected.

...

What needs my Shakespear for his honour'd Bones,
The labour of an age in piled Stones,
Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid
Under a Star-ypointing Pyramid?
Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame,
What need'st thou such weak witnes of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thy self a live-long Monument.
For whilst toth' shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalu'd Book,
Those Delphick lines with deep impression took
Then thou our fancy of it self bereaving,
Dost make us Marble with too much conceaving;
And so Sepulcher'd in such pomp dost lie,
That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die.
...

Dear Reader,

A poem at the centre of the collection,
Is missing, as you can gather.
To speak truly, its absence, equally
Baffles me. Did I lose it to computer virus
Or did the censor excise it;
Or were there only twenty-nine in all,
Making this the unwritten poem?
Or does this represent the overwhelmingly absent presence,

...

I remember a girl with raven hair.
They called her stubborn.
They called her strange.
But I watched her speak in a language
no one cared to learn.

On the playground, the sun blazed hot on the asphalt,
kids screamed like sirens,
balls slammed against walls,
whistles cut the air like knives.

...