Les Murray

The Shading Out of Poetry by Deadline

Like old-time washerwomen floodwater is sousing trees and shrubs out on the drainage. Floating wrack dribbles seaward from their labour. Last time rains poured day and night in this way, the country was refilling after years of drought. This deluge spreads mirror over roads. Human effort gets its pages turned and blanked under microgroove and

Money and the Flying Horses

Intriguing, the oaten seethe of thoroughbred horses in single stalls across a twilit cabin. Intimate, under the engines’ gale, a stamped hoof, a loose-lip sigh, like dawn sounds at track work. Pilots wearing the bat wings of intercontinental night cargo come out singly, to chat with or warn the company vet at his manifests: four