Les Murray: Two Poems

Bingham’s Ghost

Bingham, alias Lord Lucan

vanished for forty years

without a sign or a token

till his title devolved on his son.

Our earlier, flannel-shirt Bingham

vanished from company and speech

just round the time his workmate

turned solemn, with a new tale about him.

Bingham—his forenames didn’t last—

had quit bush slog to go scan

for fresh graft down the Hunter Valley.

It had come time to abandon

the cheerless tramp after cedar

logs to fell and float down

the wintry floodwater gullies.

No place for follow-my-leader

but Bingham proved not wholly missing.

Odd times, in moleskins and coat

he’d appear by the Forestry roadside,

moveless, with his pockets pulled out

and patriarchs and other locals

shivered grimly at encounters with him.

Long gone now, he froze many a rider

and silenced whole carloads of revellers.

Verticals

Whizz of blue striped

curtains on a rail

and beyond those, the dull

downrights of sheet iron

wrapped around fruit trees

to fence off horse-rubbing,

donkey-scrape, and the horns

which used to grind off sugar.

Les Murray