Blowfly Grass

by Les Murray

The houses those suburbs could afford

were roofed with old savings books, and some

seeped gravy at stitches in their walls;

some were clipped as close as fury,

some grimed and corner-bashed by love

and the real estate, as it got more vacant,

grew blady grass and blowfly grass, so called

for the exquisite lanterns of its seed,

and the land sagged subtly to a low point,

it all inclined way out there to a pit

with burnt-looking cheap marble edges

and things and figures flew up from it

like the stones in the crusher Piers had

for making dusts of them for glazes:

flint, pyroclase, slickensides, quartz, schist,

snapping, refusing, and spitting high

till the steel teeth got gritty corners on them

and could grip them craw-chokingly to grind.

It’s their chance, a man with beerglass-cut arms

told me. Those hoppers got to keep filled. A girl,

edging in, bounced out cropped and wrong-coloured

like a chemist’s photo, crying. Who could blame her

among in-depth grabs and Bali flights and phones?

She was true, and got what truth gets.