Visitor
He knocks at the door
and listens to his heart approaching.
Commentary
I like Les Murray, but sometimes I hate the things he says. I can hate his politics and his religion. A lot of the time it feels like he is telling us (the reader) that we are bad and wrong. But as Gabriel Garcia Marquez said of Borges: “He is a writer I cannot stand. And yet I love the violin he makes use of for expressing himself.”
Murray is a master poet with staunch conservative beliefs contrary to my own. But anyone who can write “Religions are poems. They concert / our daylight and dreaming mind, our / emotions, instinct, breath and native gesture // into the only whole thinking: poetry” is okay by me…. :)
This is a very short poem from his latest collection “Poems the Size of Photographs” and I love the sheer volume he fits into 12 words (including the title). I particulary like the use of sound: the thud of a knock on the door matching the thud of the Visitor’s heartbeat matching the thud (perhaps) of the feet approaching the door. I’ve spent ages going through all the possibilities and scenarios in my head… But this is a universal scene and I defy anyone to say they haven’t experienced it.
— David
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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Freda Hoare · 17 February 2003
Thanks for the poem which I enjoyed but although most of my thoughts were the same as Les’, I felt that the poem was good because of what it didn’t say. When I knock at a door the last person I think about is myself I listen to what is going on behind the door though the person knocking may have been out of breath!
Vikram Doctor · 17 February 2003
Its interesting how many very excellent poets have been quite conservative, or have turned that way as they grow older. For example, Eliot, Auden and Larkin (but NOT Pound, who was just bonkers). As someone who leans to the conservative, its a congenial thought.
Vikram