Wednesday, April 20, 2011

It was great to see mention made of Sydney poet Michael Dransfield in the final episode of the brilliant mini-series on the birth of Cleo Magazine, Paper Giants. It was an admittedly brief cameo referencing the young genius' tragic demise at the ripe old age of 24, but it underlined what a poetic presence Dransfield was at the time. In light of this and the fact that we are around about the 38th anniversary of the poet's death (he died on Good Friday, 1973), I thought I would post a short poem he wrote when he was still in his teens.

Sea

You eat ships
you taste wrong
you isolate and desolate
you are not home to men;
yours is the
subtlest beauty


Michael Dransfield (1948-73)

1 comment:

john said...

Michael probably wasn't riding a bike at that stage of his life after being hit by a cop down near candelo, which was the start of the physical rot, interesting that such a commercial presentation should reference him, he was knifed up the Cross by an unknown person. not sure if he ever made it dwon to the yellow House