WWII Australian poet

Judith Wright--Australian

 

Judith Arundell Wright
(1915-2000)

 

Judith Arundell Wright was an Australian poet, environmentalist and human rights activist.  Born in 1915, Wright studied philosophy and history at the University of Sydney.  Wright’s first book of poetry, The Moving Image was published in 1946.   During this time she worked on the Australian literary magazine, Meanjin.  She was the first Australian to receive the Queen’s Gold Medal for poetry.  This award along with several others, The Robert Frost Memorial Award in 1977 and Australian World Prize in 1984, in particular speak to her place among Australian writers.  She died in 2000.


The Company of Lovers

We meet and part now over all the world;
we, the lost company,
take hands together in the night, forget
the night in our brief happiness, silently.
We, who sought many things, throw all away
for this one thing, one only,
remembering that in the narrow grave
we shall be lonely. 

Death marshalls up his armies round us now.
Their footsteps crowd too near.
Lock your warm hand above the chilling heart
and for a time I live without my fear.
Grope in the night to find me and embrace,
for the dark preludes of the drums begin,
and round us round the company of lovers,
death draws his cordons in.

 

 

Kenneth Slessor--Australian

 

Kenneth Slessor
(1901-1971)

 

Slessor’s background is that of a journalist and war correspondent, though he found himself turning to poetry throughout World War II.  Born in Orange, New South Wales, Australia in 1901, he contributed to the Bulletin literary magazine while still in school.  From 1920-1925 he wrote for the Melbourne Punch and Melbourne Herald.  In 1927 he moved to Sydney to work on Smith’s Weekly, a position he held until 1939.  At the out break of war he was appointed as an Australian war correspondent and spent time in New Guinea, England, Greece, and the Middle East.  Following the war he worked for the Sydney Sun and was the editor of the literary magazine, Southerly from 1956-61.  He died in 1971.


Beach Burial

Softly and humbly to the Gulf of Arabs
The convoys of dead sailors come;
At night they sway and wander in the waters far under,
But morning rolls them in the foam.

Between the sob and clubbing of gunfire
Someone, it seems, has time for this,
To pluck them from the shallows and bury them in burrows
And tread the sand upon the nakedness;

And each cross, the driven stake of tidewood,
Bears the last signature of men,
Written with such perplexity, with such bewildered pity,
The words choke as they begin -

"Unknown seaman" - the ghostly pencil
Wavers and fades, the purple drips,
The breath of wet season has washed their inscriptions
As blue as drowned men's lips,

Dead seaman, gone in search of the same landfall,
Whether as enemies they fought,
Or fought with us, or neither; the sand joins them together,
Enlisted on the other front.

 

 

Leslie Murray--Australian

 

   
                                                                  Leslie Murray by David Naseby
Leslie Murray
(1938-    )

 

Leslie Murray was born in Nabiac, Australia, in 1938.  His first book of poetry, The Ilex Tree, published in 1965, received the Grace Leven Prize for poetry.  In 1972, Poems Against Economics won the Captain Cook Bicentenary Literary Competition Prize.  Lunch and Counter Lunch, received the National Book Council Award in 1974.  Murray is regarded as Australia’s leading poet.  His work has been published in ten languages.   He has been an editor of major anthologies, and of literary publications.  In 1999 he was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry.


At the Widening of a War

Everyone was frightened of the sky.

Each night, Mars emerged at the zenith.
A bleb of pure rage tore off the sun.

For days, the living and the dead
hung in the air like dust
whirled aloft from tired roads.

The fuselage of a lobster lay abandoned.

The Isles of the Blest were receding
to their sailing distances
and the gunfire of tourist shoes was stilled.

Sports stadiums and crowds loomed from another age.

The blow struck now
would be weaker than the blow withheld.