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No. 4 & 5

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Les Murray  
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BRIGHT LIGHTS ON EARTH

Luminous electric grist
brushed over the night world:
White Korea, Dark Korea,
tofu detailing all Japan,
Bangkok on a diamond saddle,
snowed—in Java and Bali 
circled by shadow isles, 
Cairo in its crushed-ice coupe,
dazzling cobwebbed Europe 
that we’ve seen go black.

Now the streetlights don’t 
switch off for wars. The past 
is fuel of glacé continents, 
it rims them in stung salt, 
Australia in her sparsely starred 
flag hammock. Human light 
is the building whose walls 
are inside. It bleeds the planet 
but who could be refused 
the glaring milk of earth?

 

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