A RETROSPECT OF HUMIDITY by Les Murray
All the air conditioners now slacken their hummed carrier wave. Once again we've served our three months with remissions in the steam and dry iron of this seaboard. In jellied glare, through the nettle-rash season we've watched the sky's fermenting laundry portend downpours. Some came, and steamed away, and we were clutched back into the rancid saline midnights of orifice weather, to damp grittiness and wiping off the air.
Metaphors slump irritably together in
It's our annual visit to the latitudes
an intrusive, heart-narrowing season
This was a difficult poem to get my head around. Not only is the language very compressed, but some of the metaphors seem, at first, to be hard to get a grip on. It's worth persevering, however, to gain a sense of the oppressive atmosphere that pervades most of the poem, until the last few lines turn the fetid heat into something cooling and easier. |
Lycra - function: trademark - used for a spandex synthetic fiber
Kleenex - function: trademark - used for a cleansing tissue
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