Les Murray Poems

Everything except language
knows the meaning of existence.
Trees, planets, rivers, time
know nothing else. They express it
...

The word goes round Repins,
the murmur goes round Lorenzinis,
at Tattersalls, men look up from sheets of numbers,
the Stock Exchange scribblers forget the chalk in their hands
...

Us all sore cement was we.
Not warmed then with glares. Not glutting mush
under that pole the lightning's tied to.
No farrow-shit in milk to make us randy.
...

Inside Ayers Rock is lit
with paired fluorescent lights
on steel pillars supporting the ceiling
of haze-blue marquee cloth
...

Religions are poems. They concert
our daylight and dreaming mind, our
emotions, instinct, breath and native gesture
...

To go home and wear shorts forever
in the enormous paddocks, in that warm climate,
adding a sweater when winter soaks the grass,
...

Back, in my fifties, fatter that I was then,
I step on the sand, belch down slight horror to walk
a wincing pit edge, waiting for the pistol shot
laughter. Long greening waves cash themselves, foam change
...

Once played to attentive faces
music has broken its frame
its bodice of always-weak laces
the entirely promiscuous art
...

The paddocks shave black
with a foam of smoke that stays,
welling out of red-black wounds.
...

Mid-9th century

Good-looking young man
in your Crimean shirt
...