Musos who rhyme: David McComb

David McComb left behind an extraordinary body of work, notably the songs and albums he recorded with Australian post-punk group The Triffids. The fact that McComb also wrote poetry comes as no surprise to admirers of the songwriter’s powerfully evocative lyrics. Collected for the first time in Beautiful Waste: Poems by David McComb, this is an example:

The Township is Sleeping Now

The township is sleeping now.
As you, too, turn to bed,
Listen …
A distant roar in the night;
Traces, a scent,
of almost inaudible music.
The only light
of poems, damned and scoured and purged,
contained in the desperate letters
that lovers exchange.