Friday 17 October 2014

A White Day-Star of Squinch

Wonderful Anecdotal Evidence has a great post about Les Murray today. It includes a link to an interview with Murray, and that interview is followed by this poem, which I hadn't consciously read before.

I often get more from an individual poem that I come across somewhere than I do from reading a collection. It's probably just a matter of poor attention - I also often find that reading just a scrap of something that I find hard going but interesting is the best way to get the most out of it, if that is at all clear.

I rather think it isn't, so I'll shut up and get out of the way of the lovely poem:


"Last World Before the Stars

These day that we’re apart
are like standing on Pluto
there in the no-time of thought,

bijou world the area of West Australia
contra-rotating farthest out
with its three moons and little mountains,

looking off the short horizon,
the Sun a white daystar of squinch
glazing the ground like frozen twilight,

no life, no company, no nearness,
never a memory or a joke
no pinned packet of dearness

just months gone in afternoon sleep
 and cripple-hikes with beeping monitors."


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