David Geor Joseph Malouf

1934 / Brisbane

An Ordinary Evening At Hamilton

The garden shifts indoors, the house lets fall
its lamp light, opens
windows in the earth

and the small stars of the grass, the night insects,
needlepoint
a jungle more dense
than any tapestry, where Saturn burns, a snow owl's nest,
and melons feed

their crystal with hot sugars of the moon. The Pacific
breaks at our table,
each grain

of salt a splinter of its light at midday, deserts
flare on the lizard's tongue. Familiar rooms
glow, rise through the dark - exotic islands; this house

a strange anatomy
of parts, so many neighbours in a thicket:
hair, eyetooth, thumb.
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