I have a dream to fill the golden sheath of a remembered day....  (Air heavy and massed and blue as the vapor of opium... domes fired in sulphurous mist... sea quiescent as a gray seal... and the emerging sun spurting up gold over Sydney, smoke-pale, rising out of the bay....) But the day is an up-turned cup and its sun a junk of red iron guttering in sluggish-green water—­ where shall I pour my dream?

ALTITUDE

I wonder how it would be here with you, where the wind that has shaken off its dust in low valleys touches one cleanly, as with a new-washed hand, and pain is as the remote hunger of droning things, and anger but a little silence sinking into the great silence.

COMRADES

Life
You have been good to me.... 
You have not made yourself too dear
to juggle with.

NOCTURNE

Indigo bulb of darkness
Punctured by needle lights
Through a fissure of brick canyon shutting out stars,
And a sliver of moon
Spigoting two high windows over the West river....

Boy, I met to-night,
Your eyes are two red-glowing arcs shifting with my vision.... 
They reflect as in a fading proof
The deadened eyes of a woman,
And your shed virginity,
Light as the withered pod of a sweet pea,
Moist and fragrant
Blows against my soul. 
What are you to me, boy,
That I, who have passed so many lights,
Should carry your eyes
Like swinging lanterns?

CACTUS SEED

Radiant notes piercing my narrow-chested room, beating down through my ceiling—­ smeared with unshapen belly-prints of dreams drifted out of old smokes—­ trillions of icily peltering notes out of just one canary, all grown to song as a plant to its stalk, from too long craning at a sky-light and a square of second-hand blue.

Silvery-strident throat—­ so assiduously serenading my brain, flinching under the glittering hail of your notes—­ were you not safe behind... rats know what thickness of... plastered wall...  I might fathom your golden delirium with throttle of finger and thumb shutting valve of bright song.

II

But if... away off... on a fork of grassed earth socketing an inlet reach of blue water... if canaries (do they sing out of cages?) flung such luminous notes, they would sink in the spirit... lie germinal... housed in the soul as a seed in the earth... to break forth at spring with the crocuses into young smiles
     on the mouth. 
Or glancing off buoyantly, radiate notes in one key with the sparkle of rain-drops on the petal of a cactus flower focusing the just-out sun.

Cactus... why cactus?  God...  God... somewhere... away off... cactus flowers, star-yellow ray out of spiked green, and empties of sky roll you over and over like a mother her baby in long grass.  And only the wind scandal-mongers with gum trees, pricking multiple leaves at his amazing story.