Lotus eating in the sunburned country

This week's poem is something of a nostalgia trip for me, harking back to poems I read in the 1980s, and to the period I lived in Australia around the same time.  It's a celebration of still beauty, in the rain on a dam (a "dam" in Australia is the lake itself, not just the retaining structure as it would be in England) - a lovely contrast to the tragedy of drought and bushfires in Victoria recently.  Les Murray is a fine poet, but I find much of his work obscure, as it relies on Australian terms and slang that are not immediately familiar to most readers.  But there are wonderful exceptions, and I've chosen one today from his 1987 collection Daylight Moon - this is Les Murray's Lotus Dam, (the wonderful photograph is taken from Josie Keys' website) and you can read more short poems here.

Lotus leaves, standing feet above the water

Collect at their centre a perfect lens of rain

And heel, and tip it back into the water.

 

Their baby leaves are feet again, or slant lips

Scrolled in decoration; pointed at toe and heel

They echo an unwalked sole in their pale green crinkles

 

And under blown and picket blooms, the floor

Of floating leaves rolls light rainwater marbles

Back and forth on sharkskins of anchored rippling.

 

Each speculum, pearl and pebble  of the first water

Rides, sprung with weight, on its live mirroring skin

Tipped green and loganberry, till one or other sky

 

Redeems it, beneath bent foils and ferruled canes

Where cupped pink bursts all day, above riddled water.

Comments

[Cornflower]

That is beautiful (and the perfect photograph). More rainy poems, please!