Having run herself up out of
plush, the white-cheeked wallaby
sits between her haunches
like an old-country tailor behind
her outstretched last yard, her tail,
and hems it with black fingers.
*
Cosmic apples by Cezanne:
their colours, streaming, hit
wavelengths of crimson and green
in the yellowy particle-wind.
Slant, parallel and pouring,
every object's a choke-point of speeds.
*
The kitchens of this 18th-century
Oxford college are ten metres high
by the squinch-eyed cooks basting
tan birds spiked in hundreds all over
the iron griddle before hellfire.
Below high lozengy church windows
others flour, fill, pluck. And this too
was the present once, that absolute of fools.
*
1828. Timber slums of the future
top a ship of the line, which receives
more who might have stormed St James's.
Cheery washing lines signal they're bound
for the world's end, to seize there
the lands of unclothed aristos
rich in myth and formal grammar
*
A mirrory tar-top road across
a wide plain. Drizzling sky.
A bike is parked at a large book
turned down tent-fashion on the verge.
One emerging says I read such crazy
things in this book. "Every bird
has stone false teeth, and enters
the world in its coffin." That's in there.
Les Murray