Poems by Judith Wright

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Woman To Man

The eyeless labourer in the night,

the selfless, shapeless seed I hold,

builds for its resurrection day---

silent and swift and deep from sight

foresees the unimagined light.

This is no child with a child's face;

this has no name to name it by;

yet you and I have known it well.

145

Judith Wright

The Surfer

He thrust his joy against the weight of the sea;

climbed through, slid under those long banks of

foam—-

(hawthorn hedges in spring, thorns in the face stinging).

How his brown strength drove through the hollow and coil

of green-through weirs of water!

Muscle of arm thrust down long muscle of water;

and swimming so, went out of sight

Judith Wright

Woman To Child

You who were darkness warmed my flesh

where out of darkness rose the seed.

Then all a world I made in me;

all the world you hear and see

hung upon my dreaming blood.

There moved the multitudinous stars,

and coloured birds and fishes moved.

There swam the sliding continents.

121

Judith Wright

Bora Ring

The song is gone; the dance

is secret with the dancers in the earth,

the ritual useless, and the tribal story

lost in an alien tale.

Only the grass stands up

to mark the dancing-ring; the apple-gums

posture and mime a past corroboree,

murmur a broken chant.

128

Judith Wright

Five Senses

Now my five senses

gather into a meaning

all acts, all presences;

and as a lily gathers

the elements together,

in me this dark and shining,

that stillness and that moving,

these shapes that spring from nothing,

172

Judith Wright

Metho Drinker

Under the death of winter's leaves he lies

who cried to Nothing and the terrible night

to be his home and bread. "O take from me

the weight and waterfall ceaseless Time

that batters down my weakness; the knives of light

whose thrust I cannot turn; the cruelty

of human eyes that dare not touch nor pity."

Under the worn leaves of the winter city

120

Judith Wright

Legend

The blacksmith's boy went out with a rifle

and a black dog running behind.

Cobwebs snatched at his feet,

rivers hindered him,

thorn branches caught at his eyes to make him blind

and the sky turned into an unlucky opal,

but he didn't mind.

I can break branches, I can swim rivers, I can stare out

Judith Wright

Bullocky

Beside his heavy-shouldered team

thirsty with drought and chilled with rain,

he weathered all the striding years

till they ran widdershins in his brain:

Till the long solitary tracks

etched deeper with each lurching load

were populous before his eyes,

and fiends and angels used his road.

134

Judith Wright

The Sisters

In the vine-shadows on the veranda;

under the yellow leaves, in the cooling sun,

sit two sisters. Their slow voices run

like little winter creeks, dwindled by frost and wind,

and the square of sunlight moves on the veranda.

They remember the gay young men on their tall horses

who came courting; the dancing and the smells of leather

and wine, the girls whispering by the fire together;

124

Judith Wright

The Old Prison

The rows of cells are unroofed,

a flute for the wind's mouth,

who comes with a breath of ice

from the blue caves of the south.

O dark and fierce day:

the wind like an angry bee

hunts for the black honey

in the pits of the hollow sea.

191

Judith Wright

Naked Girl And Mirror

This is not I. I had no body once-

only what served my need to laugh and run

and stare at stars and tentatively dance

on the fringe of foam and wave and sand and sun.

Eyes loved, hands reached for me, but I was gone

on my own currents, quicksilver, thistledown.

Can I be trapped at last in that soft face?

I stare at you in fear, dark brimming eyes.

134

Judith Wright

The Killer

The day was clear as fire,

the birds sang frail as glass,

when thirsty I came to the creek

and fell by its side in the grass.

My breast on the bright moss

and shower-embroidered weeds,

my lips to the live water

I saw him turn in the reeds.

157

Judith Wright