Gwen Harwood (discovering poets)

[Delta40]

The Wine is Drunk

The wine is drunk, the woman known.
Someone in generous darkness dries
unmanly tears for what's not found
in flesh, or anywhere. He lies
beside his love, and still alone.
Pride is a lie. His finger follows
eye, nostril, outline of the cheek.
Mortal fatigue has humbled his
exulting flesh, and all he'd seek
in a loved body's gulfs and hollows

[Delta40]

Omg - I just googled Gwen Harwood and she is Australian!

[Delta40]

This is my favourite poem as of this moment!

A Case

Uprights undid her: spires and trees.
One night she lived a vital dream.
By water and by land she came
delayed by manifold stupidities
into a wicked, feasting town.
Her Samson mind cracked pillars down
and left no trees, no upright towers.
By righteousness endowed with powers.

extravagant beyond belief
she resurrected from the gutter
the President of Dogs, whose utter
gratitude made words of barks: 'O Chief
Lover of Cleanliness, no more,
I swear, shall dogs befoul your door
or copulate in public places.'
She resurrected girls whose faces

purified of alizarin shame
were safely quarantined from sex;
charms against men hung from their necks
to the division she would never name.
All sweet, all clean this level town.
A phallus rose, she whipped it down.
Day broke.
Erect, the bawdy spires
pocked in red clouds' immodest fires.

She bathed. she munched her food chopped raw.
Balckstrap molasses charged her power.
'Shadowy Redeemer, come this hour!
Help me enforce thy horizontal law,
and scourge the crude obscentities
of dogs and girls and posturing trees.'

She met him in a crowded street,
tore off her clothes, and kissed his feet.