Kenneth Slessor Poems

Gas flaring on the yellow platform; voices running up and down;
Milk-tins in cold dented silver; half-awake I stare,
...

BURYING friends is not a pomp,
Not, indeed, Roman:
Lacking the monument,
Heroic stone;
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SMOKE upon smoke; over the stone lips
Of chimneys bleeding, a darker fume descends.
Night, the old nun, in voiceless pity bends
...

Country towns, with your willows and squares,
And farmers bouncing on barrel mares
To public houses of yellow wood
With '1860' over their doors,
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1
I saw Time flowing like a hundred yachts
That fly behind the daylight, foxed with air;
Or piercing, like the quince-bright, bitter slats
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SOMETIMES she is like sherry, like the sun through a vessel of glass,
Like light through an oriel window in a room of yellow wood;
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SMOKE upon smoke; over the stone lips
Of chimneys bleeding, a darker fume descends.
Night, the old nun, in voiceless pity bends
...

THE smell of birds' nests faintly burning
Is autumn. In the autumn I came
Where spring had used me better,
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CAPTAIN Dobbin, having retired from the South Seas
In the dumb tides of , with a handful of shells,
A few poisoned arrows, a cask of pearls,
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LATE: a cold smear of sunlight bathes the room;
The gilt lime of winter, a sun grown melancholy old,
...