May 29: Poet of the Week, Les Murray, "Bottles in a Bombed City"

It's late, but I have a new Poet of the Week.  He's Australian, and he is amazing.

His name is Les Murray, and I am looking forward to spending a week with him.

It's late.  Saint Marty is going to bed.

Bottles in a Bombed City

by:  Les Murray

They gave the city a stroke. Its memories

are cordoned off. They could collapse on you.

Water leaks into bricks of the Workers’ century   

and every meaning is blurred. No word in Roget

now squares with another. If the word is Manchester

it may be Australia, where that means sheets and towels.

To give the city a stroke, they mixed a lorryload

of henbane and meadowsweet oil and countrified her.

Now Engels supports Max, and the British Union   

of beautiful ceramics is being shovelled up,

blue-green tiles of the Corn Exchange,

umber gloss bricks of the Royal Midlands Hotel.

Unmelting ice everywhere, and loosened molecules.

When the stroke came, every bottle winked at its neighbour.