An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow (by Les Murray)
An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow (by Les Murray)
Original Text
Les Murray, Learning Human: Selected Poems (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000).
This
poem
is reproduced on the Griffin Prize Web Site
(from a volume on the 2001 International Shortlist).
1The word goes round Repins,
2the murmur goes round Lorenzinis,
3at Tattersalls, men look up from sheets of numbers,
4the Stock Exchange scribblers forget the chalk in their hands
5and men with bread in their pockets leave the Greek Club:
6There’s a fellow crying in Martin Place. They can’t stop him.
7The traffic in George Street is banked up for half a mile
8and drained of motion. The crowds are edgy with talk
9and more crowds come hurrying. Many run in the back streets
10which minutes ago were busy main streets, pointing:
11There’s a fellow weeping down there. No one can stop him.
12The man we surround, the man no one approaches
13simply weeps, and does not cover it, weeps
14not like a child, not like the wind, like a man
15and does not declaim it, nor beat his breast, nor even
16sob very loudly--yet the dignity of his weeping
17holds us back from his space, the hollow he makes about him
18in the midday light, in his pentagram of sorrow,
19and uniforms back in the crowd who tried to seize him
20stare out at him, and feel, with amazement, their minds
21longing for tears as children for a rainbow.
22Some will say, in the years to come, a halo
23or force stood around him. There is no such thing.
24Some will say they were shocked and would have stopped him
25but they will not have been there. The fiercest manhood,
26the toughest reserve, the slickest wit amongst us
27trembles with silence, and burns with unexpected
28judgements of peace. Some in the concourse scream
29who thought themselves happy. Only the smallest children
30and such as look out of Paradise come near him
31and sit at his feet, with dogs and dusty pigeons.
32Ridiculous, says a man near me, and stops
33his mouth with his hands, as if it uttered vomit--
34and I see a woman, shining, stretch her hand
35and shake as she receives the gift of weeping:
36as many as follow her also receive it
37and many weep for sheer acceptance, and more
38refuse to weep for fear of all acceptance,
39but the weeping man, like the earth, requires nothing,
40the man who seeps ignores us, and cries out
41of his writhen face and ordinary body
42not words, but grief, not messages, but sorrow,
43hard as the earth, sheer, present as the sea--
44and when he stops, he simply walks between us
45mopping his face with the dignity of one
46man who has wept, and now has finished weeping.
47Evading believers, he hurries off down Pitt Street.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2011