Volume LIII Number 12
Quadrant magazine is the leading general intellectual journal of ideas, literature, poetry and historical and political debate published in Australia.
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The air was still today—
no wind to move the trees,
the merest brush of cloud
fixed, as the earnest daub of white
on a child’s blue canvas.
Last night I felt of the stillness of you,
the transition of your breathing
a quiet subsidence of strength,
a drowsed descent into unconscious.
And though I willed the world to whisper
a passing car, careless
of the silence it might fracture,
woke you,
and I relinquished you again
to the ante-meridian emptiness of the road
that took you home.

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The Quadrant Book of Poetry: 2001 - 2010
edited by Les Murray
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