Les Murray
Photographing AspirationFume-glossed, unhearably shrill,
this car is dilated with a glaze
that will vanish before standstill -
and here's the youth swimming in space
above his whiplash motorcycle:
quadriplegia shows him its propped face -
after, he begged video scenes
not display his soaking jeans,
urine that leathers would have hidden
and the drag cars have engines on their engines.
(The Biplane Houses, 2006)
Cockspur Bush I am lived. I am died.
I was two-leafed three times, and grazed,
but then I was stemmed and multiplied,
sharp-thorned and caned, nested and raised,
earth-salt by sun-sugar. I was innerly sung
by thrushes who need fear no eyed skin thing.
Finched, ant-run, flowered, I am given the years
in now fewer berries, now more of sling
out over directions of luscious dung.
Of water crankshaft, of gases the gears
my shape is cattle-pruned to a crown spread sprung
above the starve-gut instinct to make prairies
of everywhere. My thorns are stuck with caries
of mice and rank lizards by the butcher bird.
Inches in, baby seed-screamers get supplied.
I am lived and died in, vine woven, multiplied.
(Translations from the Natural World, 1992)
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