Andreae Callanan

poetry, scholarship, curiosity

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  • 21 February 2022

    A book -- Translations from the Natural World by Les Murray -- sits on a white-painted windowsill. The book cover is white, with the title in fairly small italicized letters and the author name in much larger type. On the lower half of the book cover is a painting by Croatian artist Ivan Rabuzin. The painting is rendered in the Naïve style, and depicts four tree-covered hills under a bright sky with arching clouds.
    A book — Translations from the Natural World by Les Murray — sits on a white-painted windowsill. The book cover is white, with the title in fairly small italicized letters and the author name in much larger type. On the lower half of the book cover is a painting by Croatian artist Ivan Rabuzin. The painting is rendered in the Naïve style, and depicts four tree-covered hills under a bright sky with arching clouds.

    Keenly as I read detective fiction
    I’ve never cared who done it.
    I read it for the ambiances:
    David Small reasoning rabbinically,
    Jim Chee playing tapes in his tribal
    patrol car to learn the Blessing Way,
    or the tweed antiquaries of London,
    for from the midriff down,
    discoursing with lanthorn and laudanum.

                 I read it, then, for the stretches
                 of presence. And to watch analysis
                 and see how far author and sleuth
                 can transcend that, submitting
                 to the denied whole mind, and admit it,
                 since the culprit’s always the same:
                 the poetry. Someone’s poem did it.

                              from “Crankshaft” by Les Murray
                              Translations from the Natural World, Carcanet 1993