Love is always an awarded thing

Running rest-day ...

... and this poem is from Les Murray's 1991, pictured collection:


The Past Ever Present

Love is always an awarded thing
but some are no winners, of no awarding class.
Each is a song that they themselves can't sing.

For months of sundays, singlehanded under iron, with the flies,
they used to be safe from that dizzying small-town sex
whose ridicule brought a shamed evasion to their eyes.

Disdaining the relegated as themselves, they eyed the vividest
for whom inept gentleness without prestige was slow.
Pity even the best, then, when they're made second best.

Consider the self-sentenced who heel the earth round with shy feet
and the wallflower who weeps not from her eyes but her palms
and those who don't master the patter, or whom the codes defeat.

If love is always an awarded thing
some have cursed the judging and screamed off down old roads
and all that they killed were the song they couldn't sing.

---

Murray is one of Australia's most prolific poets, and I really like this one which he published about midway through his near 30-volumes of work!