The crabfishers' torches
keep the surf's crooked line
and a cloud's page scorches
with a smell of kerosene .
Thorny stars still halo
the sybil's black cry:
'Apothanein theto
I am longing to die',
but line, live in the speech
the ignorant shallows use
and throw their leaping catch
down between black canoes .
Les Murray
MACHINE PORTRAITS WITH PENDANT SPACEMAN
FOT
Valerie
The bulldozer stands short as a boot on its heel-high ripple soles;
it has toecapped stumps aside all day, scuffed earth and trampled
rocks
making a hobnailed scarp downstream of raw clay shoals.
Its work will hold water. The man who bounced high on the box
seat, exercising levers, would swear a full frontal orthodox
oath to that. First he shaved off the grizzled scrub
with that front end safety razor supplied by the school of hard knocks
then he knuckled down and ground his irons properly; they copped
many a harsh rub.
At knock-off time, spilling thunder, he surfaced like a sub.
o
Speaking of razors, the workshop amazes with its strop,
its elapsing leather drive belt angled to the slapstick flow
of fast work in the Chaplin age; tightened, it runs like syrup,
