W.H. Auden wrote, ‘Bless what there is for being’; and Beckett, of God: ‘The bastard, he doesn’t exist.’ Poetry swings between these poles, of celebration and deploration, lauds and plaints. At least, so it goes with poets who, otherwise disparate, have the trenchancy of Rodney Hall or Les Murray. Neither is a stranger to nuance, to evocation or implication, and any of these can be a tactical resource in mind or mouth for either of them; but the agenda is proclamation as often as not, and the sentiments are hued accordingly. At the end of most of their poems there is a pendant which says, in invisible writing, ‘dixit!’, and one usually sees why.