Kenneth Slessor Poems

CHAFING on flags of ebony and pearl,
My paladins are waiting. Loops of smoke
Stoop slowly from the coffee-cups, and curl
...

THE cock's far cry
From lonely yards
Burdens the night
With boastful birds
...

SOPHIE'S my world . . . my arm must soon or later
Like Francis Drake turn circumnavigator,
...

FEELING hunger and cold, feeling
Food, feeling fire, feeling
Pity and pain, tasting
Time in a kiss, tasting
...

'THESE are the floating berries of the night,
They drop their harvest in dark alleys down,
...

You can shuffle and scuffle and scold,
You can rattle the knockers and knobs,
Or batter the doorsteps with buckets of gold
...

The Snowdrop Girl in fields of snowdrops walks,
Whiter than foam, deeper than waters flowing,
Flakes of wild milk gone blowing,
...

WHEN to those Venusbergs, thy breasts,
By wars of love and moonlight batteries,
My lips have stormed—O pout thy mouth above,
...

The old orchard, full of smoking air,
Full of sour marsh and broken boughs, is there,
But kept no more by vanished Mulligans,
...

ADAM, because on the mind's roads
Your mouth is always in a hurry,
Because you know odes
...