Les Murray: Four New Poems

Swallows Returning

Manoeuvre and zip

make a trio of two

swallows just returning

from winterless New Guinea

and now fetching clay

to plaster a cradle

under verandah beams

and nipping the odd spider—

swallows, now tremulous,

now whipping over glass.

Green Catbird

Freckle-headed green

catbird mews its territory

out of mid rainforest.

Both sexes may bound

up from branch to branch

heading for the canopy

Catbird stays in the bush

paired or single, ready

to play the cripple

tapering off thereafter

into fruit and leaf meals,

telling their green storey.

Pippies

Knotted underwater

through ripple, looking out

until they twist upright

like darkening knife-handles

hardening, keenly split.

Australian Pelican

Stately effortful bird

runs behind its lift

into takeoff and ascent,

rising out of millennia

with its rigged pink sail

climbing to migration.

Silent collective birds

immersing in unison

drain wrigglings of fish.

Gradually, all over

the estuary, pelicans

share themselves singly

post by wharf by boat.

Les Murray