Poems on the Life and Death of Les Murray

Last Letter to Les Murray

Les, I’m writing to you

—it’s ridiculous I know—

for the last time, yet

I can almost see the

well-chosen postcard

coming back, your neat

absolutely clear cursive.

In public life you were

often cantankerous

and picked some half-mad

pointless controversies,

but in writing you were

always courteous, commiserate,

never dismissive.

We all have contradictions

and you had them in spades,

the barking of the black dog.

Over my way

the afternoon of your death

was a cool, wind-blown,

many-clouded day:

you disappeared suddenly

in the midst of autumn.

I see you young,

wandering in the sawmill

and deep wooded country.

Perhaps it’s too soon, too melodramatic

to say that the forest’s

tallest tree has fallen

but what do I care? It’s

what I feel

this steel-grey afternoon.

 

There’s nothing like death

to wash memories across

the mind’s floodplain.

My son, then young, recalls

only your stinking cigarellos

on one of your chatty visits.

I recall your incisiveness:

the fastest poetic mind

on the planet.

Sometimes I thought

you thought entirely in metaphor.

You could layer image upon image

in poems like neutron stars

that a reader would find explode

back into depths of meaning.

Australia’s Wordsworth,

you wandered in the loneliness

of metaphoric brilliance.

You had a memory

Google could only envy.

So gifted, in so many ways,

but your God never let

anyone off. You found

it hard to look

people in the eye,

to see the human easily.

 

Frank O’Connor said

he always left Yeats

feeling “like a million dollars”.

From those almost all day

Chatswood yarns

I would come away

thinking the word “soul” had meaning.

It was in my office

at your alma mater

I first saw you

stab a diabetic’s needle

straight through your trousers.

You knew more languages

sprawled across your mind

than anyone I ever met.

You loved film

but, part deaf, had no ear

for music, except the Gaelic.

 

Like Baudelaire, you were left

in your last days aphasic,

bereft of speech. The master

of words left wordless.

 

Your massive Collected Poems

sits at my elbow. Those

last words of yours

might not have been able

to leave your mouth

but that book

will never be closed.

Dennis Haskell

 

The Promise

Taller When Prone by Les Murray:

A volume of poems   each title a poem

at the end “Winding Up at the Bootmaker’s”

     turned to find fourteen pristine pages

 

Peered into the blank shadows of the binding

felt the creamy nap of the paper

seeking a lead   an inkling   a thrust of rustic divinity

     Read and un-read my expectations

 

Flicked back to the poems to read “Cattle-Hoof Hardpan”

heard the breath in four short lines

Curiously related to “The Man in the White Bay Hotel”

     coveted the idea of being “unrescued” at life’s end

 

Harmonised a Score to the beckoning beat of

“Jimmy Sharman” and the “Malley Show Drums”

a “Wyandotte Hen” fluffed up her Golden Lace feathers

     poised on one leg   stared one-eyed through the words

 

In the peculiar light of the corrugated iron Show Pavilion

“Marble Cakes in Ribboned Pens”

tri-coloured layers dipping and rising

     with the clicking heat and aroma of a wood-burning stove

 

Closed Taller When Prone on my lap

untended the memories and moved on

The sequel would be found in Waiting for the Past

     with the promise of winding up On Bunyah to fill the void.

                                                    Helene Castles

 

Aloysius’s Lament

In memoriam Les Murray 1938–2019

Master is gone; the Apprentice forlorn,

his unfinished works, shadowed, in repose—

the mentor has died, a mentor is born.

 

The cauldron is cold that fired the morn,

his watchful eye, so sharp yet so kind, closed,

Master is gone; the Apprentice forlorn.

 

Grief smothers the day, the heart’s page is torn,

so small in death, his white hair, a white rose,

the mentor has died, a mentor is born.

 

He left you complete and found you half-formed.

Works you presented, so many he chose,

Master is gone; the Apprentice forlorn.

 

There is no tomorrow, the soul is sore,

the beloved’s fled, you cannot follow,

the mentor has died, a mentor is born.

 

Pick up your tools, Aloysius, and soar,

there’s much you must give, before you can go.

Master is gone; the Apprentice forlorn—

the mentor has died, a mentor is born.

                                             Joe Dolce

 

Vale Les Murray

Not knowing any better

I sent them off to Quadrant

got back a letter

“I’ve taken ‘The Conqueror’

and scribbled on the rest,

They seemed to need it.

Send more before I am old.”

 

So I did, hoping,

and he always wrote back

a strong, bold hand:

“You’ve used ‘black’

twice in the same stanza;

fix that and send again.”

 

But then

“No, on a second read

this one’s lost its magic.”

And then

“Sorry, I can’t like any of these.”

And

“Your muse has let you off too lightly.”

Though now and then he took one.

 

I had a clear picture of the farm,

meant to drive there one day

as a pilgrimage

drop in unannounced,

never did,

then there was On Bunyah.

Didn’t need to after that.

 

Saw him read at the House

a few years back,

The Pope of poetry—

the faithful seeking blessings—

a great shy, shambles of a man,

stumbling but infallible,

an institution already dying.

But the words ring true.

 

They now remain forever.

                                     Christopher Nailer

 

The Pilgrimage

Later, as we lost our way on the back roads

Somewhere after crossing Firefly Creek

I looked back and saw your famous country

Preening itself in a late afternoon laze

 

We’d been collecting rivers and ways

Winding through the names of your song cycle

Like pilgrims, counting the crossings—

Nine of the Manning by the end of one day

 

At the threshold, where the Wang Wauk Forest Way

Veers to the left, and the sign says Bunyah

We got out to gather our bearings

Submitting to the evaluation of your kookaburras

 

Like triage nurses assessing our fitness

To pass on down Cecil’s Lane

Some signal of approval flicked from beak to beak

And they winged us through

 

I would have brought precious oils for your feet

But you would have laughed and politely declined

So we came bearing gifts and birthday cake

Small tributes for the holy spirit of poetry

 

The immaculate editor

Who crossed my path one fortunate day

And said, of my earnest poem, I’ll take that if I may

 

We’ll cross one more river for you, before the light fades.

Elisabeth Wentworth

 

When Reading Poetry by Les Murray

Everything is as expected, yet new;

as a memory or a déjà vu.

The way sentences form as though

his brain has connected to mine

and his point of view is mine.

And when he cries

his tears come from that place

of holding time to attention—

 

I’ve been to that place, listening;

when words make sense.

There, music is in a Celtic key

and haunts the skin on arms

until returning sanity gives back

an ability to breathe normally. 

                                    Marilyn Peck

 

Bunyah
For Les Murray

Gold waistcoated, gliding

Guru of the sky, sun

The darkness dispeller—

Moon pensive with

A penchant for gilding—

A long distance smile

From her bruised-bone head.

 

Here the trees rest

Leaves sleep, spent

Silence hovers in suspended realms of silence

Moonlight gilds time, swirls

In coils of leftover wire

Gates wear moonlit braces.

 

What to do with this complicit existence

Fungus and sinuous roots unseen

Trees are touching underneath

In a midnight of earth

Existence goes on—

The river is surrendering, swishing

Her flowing silver arabesques.

 

Pasture gossips in bunches

Language pauses at the borders

Of things, in awe of illiterate magic

Night with its dawdling pools of light

Martians are probably summarising—

Drowsing iron roofs converse

With sidelong glints

Moment by moment

 

Things are measured by different light

Light ticked over by unseen time

The mind wandering up and down

Avenues of thought, not knowing much

Nobody about—impatient for a sign

Some glowing thing—to caress and touch.

Luke Whitington

 

Alas!
In Memory of Les Murray

A self-obsessed poet, the worst

By far I’m called upon to bear

Is editors refusing work,

And having waited months to hear

 

I test the ssae for

A telling thickness, lose control

And tear it open to confirm.

Not only fingers tremble as

 

The formally polite “No” leaps

To eyes clouding as next they search

The pages, their white freshness gone

From handling, for a sign of care,

 

As your quick answers showed with blows

Dealt softly by “Alas, these lack—”,

Or a similar sentiment,

Almost as though you were more hurt,

 

Till carefully I’d revise, send out,

Encouraged to risk once again

What always feels without such words

Like a sharp slap across the face.

Graeme Hetherington

 

Les Murray Reads His Poetry 

A long time since I last saw him

looking so relaxed—

among shelves of books and racks of  CDs,

at ease with himself

and the people who’d gathered

around, some sitting in armchairs,

others with small children at his feet.

 

One hand on the lectern

the other holding a book,

he stood, almost shyly,

shifting from one foot to the other—

dispensing with the microphone,

peering through reading glasses,

waiting to begin.

 

Suddenly, we were listening to a magician

doing tricks with words—

turning them around, upside down,

inside out, joining them

in surprise combinations

to achieve a particular rhythm or sound.

 

Image followed image,

narrative mixed with metaphor,

rhyme and half-rhyme

as we watched, listened, fascinated

by his facility with words.

 

Except this was no illusion.

Lyrebirds whistled, danced

on a rainforest carpet of leaves.

We heard the ultrasound of bats

above unopened books and music sitting silently

in a thousand CDs

under the recessed lights.

 

We heard water trickling

out of North Coast creeks, across

childhood paddocks, singing of farmlands

and cleared gum forests—

honouring poverty, decrying greed,

threading its way out of Bunyah,

down to Sydney, around

the cities of the world,

and back to the northern rivers

where it fell as bountiful rain.

 

Finally, taking a deep breath,

he read from a forthcoming volume—

still relaxed, joking, making

us smile, laugh, share in his gift.

The words bedazzled, spun,

broke like shards of light—

piercing the hearts and minds of people

sitting in armchairs

and holding small children spellbound at his feet.

Peter Skrzynecki

 

A library has been destroyed

A library has been destroyed

and we can never get it back,

now that he has been redeployed.

A library has been destroyed

with all that knowledge we enjoyed,

but no one can take up the slack.

A library has been destroyed:

what wouldn’t we give to have Les back?

Derek Fenton

 

Les Murray Reading at the Midland City Hall

In Midland, he is on the prowl.

A grizzly bear without the growl:

    wandering through a field of verse,

    jolly shaman without a curse.

Unflappable and kindly owl,

he’s planting poems with a trowel,

for us to peck at like a fowl,

    their sonorous seeds to disperse,

        in Midland.

Scattering consonant and vowel;

smiling face and jocular jowl,

    plucking wisdom out of a purse

    while questioning a universe

that is, at once, both fair and foul,

        in Midland.

Derek Fenton

 

Les

A tall tree

makes a long shadow

shading us.

“Call me Les,” you never stood for titles.

You never ignored or were

too busy to greet at writers’ festivals,

reading events, in the long signing line,

no matter how small,

you made time to praise me,

draw me forward—

send me hand-written postcards,

scribble notes on my poems—

some delighted you, and you wrote

me memories of sparrows, a horse, cities, poets.

Some had lines or words you would

not scrawl out, but returned.

Though if re-worked you could

give them a place—printed.

You warned me to not study art

in Australia, that it was disastrous,

but I did and was silenced—

voice and hands stilled for years,

they set lawyer dogs on me,

I tried to hold up while holed up, shaking.

You are my big tree

who always noticed, smiling,

“I have a hat the same,”

“I love the music in your words,”

“I read your poem in Mildura.”

My touch-wood talisman,

lifting.

Your branches everreach in the sun,

your voice growing me,

your sadness an empathy of shared tears,

your stories showing us far-reaching land—

a trunk-call to overseas.

A fine ear, native fruit,

living large,

noticing the unnoticed:

Dream of wearing shorts forever

Writing through the black dog

Red road trips; Our Sun

warming, venturing, observing:

Young fox, Native bees,

Lyrebird, Wagtail, Emu,

Sand dingoes, Blowflies,

Low Down Sandcastle Blues

Grinding brown Tin Dish poverty

Leaves we could pick, roll,

marvelling at the colours,

and carry in our hands.

Making our root-stock strong

to bear words proud,

even as you pull up stumps.

Our tree, our big tree, our oxygen,

sheltering, growing us,

our great limbs reaching out—

gently                                                                                                                                                              Ashlley Morgan-Shae

 

This silent answer
Dedicated to the memory of Les Murray

everywhere is here …

The tile travelled across seas from the Middle East,
through desert solitudes burning like the skies above them, 
and though each pattern passed through such fire, 
it mocked earth and time by forming a snowflake 
with edges containing the ocean of the universe 
on a frozen yet expanding tip

Each spiral in space bound and unbound 
in whose mirror I saw,
man begetting man to spite time’s tyranny 
with legacy 
So my mind splintered to behold 
all things including thought birthing itself 
within those Islamic shapes,
dispensing of God with the unknowing sword of irony

Jason Morgan