Robert Gray: Brushtail Possum

Thumps the water-tank
from out of the Gothic winter persimmon tree,
ticks like the start of rain
on tin
of the verandah
as we sit about after tea.

The banana leaves are shredded
like buckskin,
sway in night wind
against a closed window,
the fuel stove crackles,
the lamp-light an oily yellow.

We take some bread out:
a possum hung
over the sag of the guttering,
blackish-grey,
short-eared, snouted, amxious stare,
it swipes the bread with a human claw.

Eats it there;
nose pink and wet as a tongue,
tightly-packed fur
like moss. One eye is blue-white,
blind 
from a twig or fight.

The whiskers wide-spread, like a spider's web.
The face twitching about
looks down
with its live eye
as with the one that's matching the moon,
against a salted sky.


From Grass Script (1978). This shows some of Gray's virtues: a love of quiet narrative and a refusal to make big statements when none are warranted. The narrative goes up a notch with the revelation and development of the blind eye. I'd planned originally to use Gray's "Currawongs" because I like currawongs - but decided in the end it was a terrible poem, with all of Gray's vices (such as over-description, which the above poem's not entirely free of). If there's a good currawong poem I'm yet to find it.