Judith Wright: Poetry

Judith Wright: Poetry Poem Text

Magpies

Along the road the magpies walk

with hands in pockets, left and right.

They tilt their heads, and stroll and talk.

In their well-fitted black and white.

They look like certain gentlemen

who seem most nonchalant and wise

until their meal is served — and then

what clashing beaks, what greedy eyes!

But not one man that I have heard

throws back his head in such a song

of grace and praise — no man nor bird.

Their greed is brief; their joy is long.

For each is born with such a throat

as thanks his God with every note.

Metho Drinker

Under the death of winter's leaves he lies

who cried to Nothing and the terrible night

to be his home and bread. "O take from me

the weight and waterfall ceaseless Time

that batters down my weakness; the knives of light

whose thrust I cannot turn; the cruelty

of human eyes that dare not touch nor pity."

Under the worn leaves of the winter city

safe in the house of Nothing now he lies.

His white and burning girl, his woman of fire,

creeps to his heart and sets a candle there

to melt away the flesh that hides from bone,

to eat the nerve that tethers him in time.

He will lie warm until the bone is bare

and on a dead dark moon he wakes alone.

It was for Death he took her; death is but this;

and yet he is uneasy under her kiss

and winces from that acid of her desire.

The Old Prison

The rows of cells are unroofed,

a flute for the wind's mouth,

who comes with a breath of ice

from the blue caves of the south.

O dark and fierce day:

the wind like an angry bee

hunts for the black honey

in the pits of the hollow sea.

Waves of shadow wash

the empty shell bone-bare,

and like a bone it sings

a bitter song of air.

Who built and laboured here?

The wind and the sea say

-Their cold nest is broken

and they are blown away-

They did not breed nor love,

each in his cell alone

cried as the wind now cries

through this flute of stone.

Legend

The blacksmith's boy went out with a rifle

and a black dog running behind.

Cobwebs snatched at his feet,

rivers hindered him,

thorn branches caught at his eyes to make him blind

and the sky turned into an unlucky opal,

but he didn't mind.

I can break branches, I can swim rivers, I can stare out any spider I meet,

said he to his dog and his rifle.

The blacksmith's boy went over the paddocks

with his old black hat on his head.

Mountains jumped in his way,

rocks rolled down on him,

and the old crow cried, You'll soon be dead.

And the rain came down like mattocks.

But he only said,

I can climb mountains, I can dodge rocks, I can shoot an old crow any day,

and he went on over the paddocks.

When he came to the end of the day, the sun began falling,

Up came the night ready to swallow him,

like the barrel of a gun,

like and old black hat,

like a black dog hungry to follow him.

Then the pigeon, the magpie and the dove began wailing

and the grass lay down to pillow him.

His rifle broke, his hat blew away and his dog was gone and the sun was falling.

But in front of the night, the rainbow stood on the mountain,

just as his heart foretold.

He ran like a hare,

he climbed like a fox;

he caught it in his hands, the colours and the cold -

like a bar of ice, like the column of a fountain,

like a ring of gold.

The pigeon, the magpie and the dove flew up to stare,

and the grass stood up again on the mountain.

The blacksmith's boy hung the rainbow on his shoulder

instead of his broken gun.

Lizards ran out to see, snakes made way for him,

and the rainbow shone as brightly as the sun.

All the world said, Nobody is braver, nobody is bolder,

nobody else has done

anything equal to it. He went home as easy as could be

with the swinging rainbow on his shoulder.

Five Senses

Now my five senses

gather into a meaning

all acts, all presences;

and as a lily gathers

the elements together,

in me this dark and shining,

that stillness and that moving,

these shapes that spring from nothing,

become a rhythm that dances,

a pure design.

While I'm in my five senses

they send me spinning

all sounds and silences,

all shape and colour

as thread for that weaver,

whose web within me growing

follows beyond my knowing

some pattern sprung from nothing-

a rhythm that dances

and is not mine.

South of My Days

South of my days' circle, part of my blood's country,

rises that tableland, high delicate outline

of bony slopes wincing under the winter,

low trees, blue-leaved and olive, outcropping granite-

clean, lean, hungry country. The creek's leaf-silenced,

willow choked, the slope a tangle of medlar and crabapple

branching over and under, blotched with a green lichen;

and the old cottage lurches in for shelter.

O cold the black-frost night. The walls draw in to the warmth

and the old roof cracks its joints; the slung kettle

hisses a leak on the fire. Hardly to be believed that summer

will turn up again some day in a wave of rambler-roses,

thrust its hot face in here to tell another yarn-

a story old Dan can spin into a blanket against the winter.

Seventy years of stories he clutches round his bones.

Seventy years are hived in him like old honey.

Droving that year, Charleville to the Hunter,

nineteen-one it was, and the drought beginning;

sixty head left at the McIntyre, the mud round them

hardened like iron; and the yellow boy died

in the sulky ahead with the gear, but the horse went on,

stopped at Sandy Camp and waited in the evening.

It was the flies we seen first, swarming like bees.

Came to the Hunter, three hundred head of a thousand-

cruel to keep them alive - and the river was dust.

Or mustering up in the Bogongs in the autumn

when the blizzards came early. Brought them down; we

brought them down, what aren't there yet. Or driving for Cobb's on the run

up from Tamworth-Thunderbolt at the top of Hungry Hill,

and I give him a wink. I wouldn't wait long, Fred,

not if I was you. The troopers are just behind,

coming for that job at the Hillgrove. He went like a luny,

him on his big black horse.

Oh, they slide and they vanish

as he shuffles the years like a pack of conjuror's cards.

True or not, it's all the same; and the frost on the roof

cracks like a whip, and the back-log break into ash.

Wake, old man. This is winter, and the yarns are over.

No-one is listening South of my days' circle

I know it dark against the stars, the high lean country

full of old stories that still go walking in my sleep.

Request to a Year

If the year is meditating a suitable gift,

I should like it to be the attitude

of my great- great- grandmother,

legendary devotee of the arts,


who having eight children

and little opportunity for painting pictures,

sat one day on a high rock

beside a river in Switzerland


and from a difficult distance viewed

her second son, balanced on a small ice flow,

drift down the current toward a waterfall

that struck rock bottom eighty feet below,


while her second daughter, impeded,

no doubt, by the petticoats of the day,

stretched out a last-hope alpenstock

(which luckily later caught him on his way).

Nothing, it was evident, could be done;

And with the artist's isolating eye

My great-great-grandmother hastily sketched the scene.

The sketch survives to prove the story by.


Year, if you have no Mother's day present planned,

Reach back and bring me the firmness of her hand.

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