ROBERT GRAY...15 POEMS

Robert Gray is one of the most acclaimed living Australian poets. Born and brought up on the north coast of New South Wales, his poetry is notable for its visual quality, suppleness of rhythm, clarity and observation of the natural world. He has recently published a novel
"The Land I Came Through Last"
He also lives in the same suburb as me in Sydney. Sometimes I see him catching the bus.

"Robert Gray is one of the contemporary masters of poetry in English." Les Murray.

From the collection "Creekwater Journal"

Looking After A Friend's House

I wake sometime towards daybreak,
hold apart
the curtains, propping myself up
and can see the moon
setting.

It's down behind the stand
of distant bare trees-those torn bits
of flyscreen
tacked onto sticks

The moon is settling
quickly, the way an egg yolk
slides along
and off
a table top

It shines across
these paddocks with their dark
turned- over clods
In some of the hollows, in the moonlight
water lies.

I reach back and
press the light switch, to keep on
reading. And read
until there glides up against me what seems
an icy cat.

Drab as goat's milk
the first daylight. I hunch down and feel myself
dissolving.
And next, sunlight is heavy on the quilt,
I am under all the dust motes.

Now this light will be inside, shoved right through
the house, cycling down
onto linoleum.
And I hear the refrigerator starting up again
in the bare kitchen.