For my next response to Les Murray’s poetry, I’ve chosen a deceptively simple four-line poem as my starting point. I suspect Murray’s poem speaks for itself. I hope that mine does too.
First Things Last
(After “Incorrigible Grace”)
Saint Vincent de Paul, old friend, my sometime tailor, I daresay by now you are feeding the rich in heaven. (Les Murray, “Incorrigible Grace”)
Grace gives surprise, like sunshine reversing floods,
like the plenty of a crop we did not sow,
a brown trickle amidst faithless dirt,
or tears that wash unbelief to the ground;
like a home found, unexpectedly, on Samaritan turf,
a harvest of smiles when we have paid only in frowns,
the mercy of a hefty but finite price for carelessness,
of lessons learnt in coins, not in souls;
or like the men who wait at the platform, tablets poised
beneath their noses, soon to learn
from the woman in the beanie with
absolutely nothing to her name.
The Consolations of Writing 