Kenneth Slessor Poems

MY cure of souls, my cage of brutes,
Go lick and learn at these my boots!
When tainted highways tear a hole,
I bid my cobbler welt the sole.
...

(To the Poets' Ladies)
SHALL I give you the Bourbon-sugars
Of sherry and yellow sky
And a girl in a country curricle
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'TALBINGO RIVER'—as one says of bones:
'Captain' or 'Commodore' that smelt gunpowder
In old engagements no one quite believes
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SUDDENLY to become John Benbow, walking down William Street
With a tin trunk and a five-pound note, looking for a place to
...

I
MUSIC, on the air's edge, rides alone,
Plumed like empastured Caesars of the sky
With a god's helmet; now, in the gold dye
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AT five I wake, rise, rub on the smoking pane
A port to see—water breathing in the air,
Boughs broken. The sun comes up in a golden stain,
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SOPHIE, in shocks of scarlet lace,
Receives her usual embrace
Beneath a hedge, behind a curtain,
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IN Undine's mirror the cutpurse found
Five candlesticks by magic drowned,
Like boughs of silver . . . and pale as death,
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AFTER all, you are my rather tedious hero;
It is impossible (damn it!) to avoid
Looking at you through keyholes.
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TRANSPORTS of filed nerves; a wistful cough;
One sensual hairbrush reluctantly concludes
The Great Harry's excruciations and beatitudes,
...