Day: April 7, 2022

By Les Murray

Poetry and Religion
by Les Murray
From book: The daylight moon [

Religions are poems. They concert
our daylight and dreaming mind, our
emotions, instinct, breath and native gesture

into the only whole thinking: poetry.
Nothing’s said till it’s dreamed out in words
and nothing’s true that figures in words only.

A poem, compared with an arrayed religion,
may be like a soldier’s one short marriage night
to die and live by. But that is a small religion.

Full religion is the large poem in loving repetition;
like any poem, it must be inexhaustible and complete
with turns where we ask Now why did the poet do that?

You can’t pray a lie, said Huckleberry Finn;
you can’t poe one either. It is the same mirror:
mobile, glancing, we call it poetry,

fixed centrally, we call it a religion,
and God is the poetry caught in any religion,
caught, not imprisoned. Caught as in a mirror

that he attracted, being in the world as poetry
is in the poem, a law against its closure.
There’ll always be religion around while there is poetry

or a lack of it. Both are given, and intermittent,
as the action of those birds — crested pigeon, rosella parrot —
who fly with wings shut, then beating, and again shut.

From book: The daylight moon

The poor

The poor can’t take this lockdown for too long
They have no back gardens, no birdsong
Their bed rooms shared, or they have none at all
No privacy, no silence, it appals

I hear them talked about in cruel ways
“They go into McDonalds every day”
Would you cook your meals in red wine bathed
If you had only got a microwave?

They can’t keep warm in winter in their homes
McDonald’s is a luxury they earn
Clean and neat with heating and hot drinks
They sit and look at me , like I’m the Sphinx

The average reading age in Britain’s only nine
They can’t read Boris’ letter, that’s malign