Keith Harrison

... (read more)

I stare from my study window into trees. Considering all things, I watch the first snow spill White seeds across the rubble where the barn Towered over us with its cracked spire For almost half a century until Some feckless pot-head changed The whole thing into fire. ... (read more)

The summer night is dangerous and deep.I lie, dead still, aware of the tiniest soundsBeing so full of joy I cannot sleep. The night is dangerous, so many lives.I love my husband well. A sharp moonRubs the spine of the barn. Nothing moves. So many lives for the small years that remain.My skin more wrinkled than a withered prune,I study my hand and no word can explain. ... (read more)

Ern Malley aside, Harold Stewart and James McAuley are poetic confrères in a region of Australian letters that has been largely overlooked. McAuley (1917–76), who translated only intermittently from the German, gave us poems by Stefan Georg, Karl Haushofer, and Georg Trakl, but the poem I will concentrate on is his 1946 version of Rainer Maria Rilke’s ‘Herbsttag’, which is so remarkable t ... (read more)