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A huge loss of a huge talent (& man). I met him few times, once in Oz, He did love that ‘sprawl’… Doug > On Apr 29, 2019, at 6:14 AM, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/29/les-murray-australian-poet-and-literary-critic-dies-at-the-age-of-80 > > In honour of the passing of Australia’s big-hearted man. > > Bill > > Midsummer Ice > > > Remember how I used > > to carry ice in from the road > > for the ice chest, half running, > > the white rectangle clamped in bare hands > > the only utter cold > > in all those summer paddocks? > > > How, swaying, I’d hurry it inside > > en bloc and watering, with the butter > > and the wrapped bread precarious on top of it? > > ‘Poor Leslie,’ you would say, > > ‘your hands are cold as charity -‘ > > You made me take the barrow > > but uphill it was heavy. > > > We’d no tongs, and a bag > > would have soaked and bumped, off balance. > > I loved to eat the ice, > > chip it out with the butcher knife’s grey steel. > > It stopped good things rotting > > and it had a strange comb at its heart, > > a splintered horizon rife with zero pearls. > > > But you don’t remember. > > A doorstep of numbed creek water the colour of tears > > but you don’t remember. > > I will have to die before you remember. > > > Les Murray > > ######################################################################## > > To unsubscribe from the POETRYETC list, click the following link: > https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=POETRYETC&A=1 Douglas Barbour [log in to unmask] https://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/ Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuations 2 (UofAPress). Recording Dates (Rubicon Press). Listen. If (UofAPress): We live in a world of suffering in which evil is rampant, a world whose events do not confirm our Being, a world that has to be resisted. Is is in this situation that the aesthetic moment offers hope, that we find a crystal or a poppy beautiful means that we are less alone, that we are more deeply inserted into existence than the course of a single life would lead us to believe…The energy of one’s perception become inseparable from the energy of creation. – John Berger ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the POETRYETC list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=POETRYETC&A=1