Kenneth Slessor

27 March 1901 – 30 June 1971 / Orange, New South Wales

Trade Circular

(To the Poets' Ladies)
SHALL I give you the Bourbon-sugars
Of sherry and yellow sky
And a girl in a country curricle
Merrily bowling by?
Or darkness flying with crystals,
And the great Miser, Night,
Rubbing a mountain's breast-bone
With an old rind of light?
Wake up the handcuffed angels,
Muster the marble kings,
Till the blood swims in their bodies
And the stone captain sings?
Ask for a cage of comets,
Poets will give you this—
But if you should ask them for nothing,
They'll see how dead girls kiss.
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