I rank all the beautiful things there are <\/p>\n The shearing shed is in good order, I Rank All the Beautiful Things There Are I rank all the beautiful things there are starting with self-sacrifice, then supernovas, the brain, love, virga, Korean pottery, lemurs, cuckoo clocks, suits of armour for horses, a child\u2019s first words, mercy, bread, and so on. The list extends for miles in knee-high piles of pages I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":219,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[346,349],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nstarting with self-sacrifice, then supernovas,
\nthe brain, love, virga, Korean pottery,
\nlemurs, cuckoo clocks, suits of armour for horses,
\na child\u2019s first words, mercy, bread, and so on.
\nThe list extends for miles in knee-high piles
\nof pages I arrange on my weekends.
\nBut then I think that comprehensiveness
\nis better served by a more encyclopaedic
\npresentation, so in the best morocco
\nI bind the beautiful things alphabetically.
\nThe volumes cover fine segments of language,
\nlimited like thin, bright bands of colour:
\nPenumbra to Pineapple, Fox to Funerals,
\nRome to Rum, Antigone<\/em> to Apricot.
\nEvery shelf groans under the staggering weight
\nof another shelf, it seems. The accumulation
\nof items in fixed forms is knowledge itself.
\nBut then I think that serendipity
\nis better served by digitising all
\nmy lists and groupings. I put them in a folder\u2014
\nthe first step in putting them out of mind.
\nFive years pass and I remember them.
\nI look and realise all my views have changed.
\nI start again: with empathy, then music,
\ncoral reefs, tornadoes, ice, titanium,
\nspoken Esperanto, things like that.
\nI interrogate my past like someone who\u2019s
\nset an exam for the examined life.
\nThe only thing I am more than wrong is right.<\/p>\nAn Abandoned Farm Near Lockhart, New South Wales<\/h4>\n
\nand if it strongly smells of piss
\nand hums with every kind of fly
\nthere is, at least the tools still work.
\nThe heat outside makes me want to die;
\nin here I\u2019m sure I have already.
\nTwenty-year-old wool appears
\nfrom among the roofbeams when I cough.
\nThere is no black that\u2019s blacker than
\na wool that\u2019s changed to black.
\nI say that we should turn the place
\ninto a working farm museum,
\nbut I try to turn everything
\ninto a museum. Yet still
\nthe moment and the sentiment
\nare right. They feel so right to me.
\nOf course they do. I have the hands
\nand posture of a visitor.
\nWhat I\u2019m saying is all ego,
\nand that\u2019s not what farming is or was.
\n(According to what I am told.)
\nIt\u2019s selling rather than keeping things,
\nkilling to sell, nurturing to kill,
\nand letting self-control be nurtured.
\n(That\u2019s what I\u2019m told by those who know.)
\nThe rising damp eats the dado.
\nAnd in the garden by the house,
\npersevering, unreliant on
\nthe absent gardener: plumbago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"