Um - poetry

I thought I'd like Les Murray.  He's an antipodean country type who, I'm guessing, likes his grub.  We have common ground, I thought.  But I'm an instant gratification sort and those reports on his anti- intellectual stance are misleading; he is very clever and makes his reader work.  

I Wrote a Little Haiku, is a poem from Waiting for the Past.  A poem in a poem about a poem.  Murray unpicks meaning made in a few words:

The Springfields

Lead drips out of

a burning farm rail.

Their Civil War.

At first he seems piqued; the critics disliked its obscurity, but, in his explanation that follows, he lifts the words so we can see the layers of his vision of the past beneath.  The whole poem is evocative of the transforming nature of war.

On re-reading the haiku, which is in the first and second stanza of the poem, the precision of 13 words to communicate so effectively creates satisfaction.  

The past has been summonsed and like all good exercise the reader can feel better for the work.  I do wonder if he has been leading us off track though.  If the lead he speaks of could be the misfiring of a poet's pencil.  Is there a hint of the so called 'poetry war' he had with critics?  A war of civil words.  

Turns out that I do like Les Murray.  His poetry is not straight forward, I can feel it doing me good.