The Full Text of “An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow”
The Full Text of “An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow”
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“An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow” Introduction
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"An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow" was written by the Australian poet Les Murray in 1969. The poem is set amidst the hustle and bustle of 1960s Sydney, which momentarily grinds to a halt due to the presence of a man openly weeping in a main square. The inhabitants of Sydney are by turns fascinated, moved, and appalled by the crying man. The man, for his part, is an ambiguous figure—someone who on the one hand seems like a kind of prophet or Christ-like savior, but on the other seems to be exactly what he looks like: a person crying, who doesn't have any "words" or "messages" to offer the onlookers. Above all, he seems to represent the ability to deeply feel and openly express emotion—something that the poem implies has been stifled by the busy modern world.
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“An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow” Summary
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A rumor quickly travels around various Sydney establishments: bars, cafes, and a gentlemen's sporting and social club. At the Stock Exchange, stock brokers are suddenly distracted from their usual business. Men leave a Greek restaurant and head towards Martin Place, where there's a man crying uncontrollably.
The spectacle of the crying man is already causing traffic jams. People are flooding to the square to see him, nervously excited about what's going on. They're running through the streets towards the man, shouting out the news that there's somebody crying uncontrollably.
We surround the man but are afraid to get close to him. He does nothing but cry, openly and without shame. He doesn't cry like a child nor like the wind; he cries like a man. He doesn't shout about what's wrong nor bang on his chest, and his weeping isn't even very loud.
The purity of the man's crying seems to hold back the crowd from intruding. His sorrow forms a kind of star of empty space around him in the middle of the day. Police officers, who at first tried to grab him, now find themselves in awe, staring at the man and longing to cry themselves, much like children long for the sight of a rainbow.
In the future, people will claim that the man was protected by a halo or some sort of force field, but these things don't exist. Others will claim that they were totally appalled and would have put an end to things, but they weren't actually there. In the moment, even the most macho men among us are shocked into silence, and become filled with a surprising sense of peace and good will. Other people in the area, who just moments earlier seemed happy, suddenly start screaming. The only ones comfortable getting close to the crying man are young children, people exuding a sense of inner peace, and the city animals like dogs and pigeons.
A man near me says that the whole thing is completely silly and pretends to vomit in disgust. Then I watch a woman have a near-religious experience as she touches the man and then starts weeping uncontrollably herself.
Other people do the same thing and also start weeping, some because they feel a sense of being accepted. Others try not to weep because they're scared of being accepted. The weeping man, meanwhile, doesn't need anyone to do anything; he ignores everyone around him, indifferent as the earth itself. His face continues to contort with tears, but he has no words or messages to offer the crowd, only his utter sadness. His pain is pure and tough, strong as the earth and as imposing as the sea.
When the man finally stops crying, he gets up and walks through the crowd while drying the tears from his face. He carries the dignified air of someone who has completed the task that they set out to do.
He avoids the people who try to follow him and runs off down a nearby street.
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“An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow” Themes
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Modern Life and Suppressed Emotion
The poem suggests that the hustle and bustle of modern society (in this case, Sydney, Australia) has caused a disconnect between people and their emotions. People keep their distance from one another and keep their true feelings bottled up as they go about their busy lives, the poem implies, which is why the image of the man who weeps with “sorrow” seems so shocking. The fact that so many onlookers are deeply moved by the man’s unfiltered display of emotion suggests that they, too, would like to be able to more freely express themselves. The poem thus becomes a critique of the suppression of emotion, suggesting that the ability to feel—and to express those feelings—is crucial to being human.
The poem opens with a flurry of the different hallmarks of urban life—a betting shop, a café, the Australian Stock Exchange, and, of course, crowds and traffic. Yet though people in this city are packed tightly together, there isn’t much indication of emotional life or connection. The implication is that emotional expression has been inhibited by the social expectations and relentless pace of modern life.
When word quickly gets around that there is a “a fellow crying in Martin Place,” it’s thus an extraordinary spectacle that draws the city’s inhabitants into its orbit. This passionate display of raw emotion brings the city to a halt.
On the one hand, the man’s tears seem to break with the social convention that people keep to themselves and keep a lid on their emotions in public. The man’s behavior is also out of place because crying doesn’t serve any obvious economic function in a society built on money, productivity, and consumption; he's stopping in the middle of all the hubbub to do something that has no societally meaningful purpose beyond letting himself feel something.
Importantly, seeing a man crying in the street challenges other city-dwellers to consider their own attitudes to emotion. Some are so stuck in their mindsets that they ridicule this man, reiterating the idea that such emotional openness is out of place in the modern urban world.
Yet many others are moved and find themselves wishing they, too, could feel so intensely. Some want to follow the man as if he were a religious leader, a prophet of a better way of life. Even the police, initially tasked with trying to remove the man, find themselves feeling, “with amazement, their minds / longing for tears as children for a rainbow.”
This reference to childhood suggests that the man represents a fundamental importance of emotion to being human, implying that the ability to feel is unlearned through growing up in modern society. That is, society teaches people to focus on achievement, consumerism, and money, neglecting their inner emotional lives and ability to empathize with one another in the process.
The man’s crying is also like a rainbow in that it is an ordinary, natural occurrence that nevertheless inspires wonder and awe. The rainbow doesn’t have any economic purpose, but it moves people emotionally. Like a rainbow, the man appears briefly, attracts attention, and is gone. In doing so, he encourages people to embrace their inner emotional lives, while also exposing the attitudes of those who are too far gone to reconnect with their ability to feel.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-11
- Lines 12-21
- Lines 28-31
- Lines 32-46
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Masculinity
The poem questions old-fashioned and outdated ideas about what it means to be a man, particularly when it comes to the ability to express sorrow and grief. It suggests that male displays of emotion represent a kind of dignity and strength, rather than weakness.
The poem repeatedly calls attention to the gender of the man crying as well as those watching him, many of whom are also men. Note how the words “men,” “fellow,” and “man” appear throughout, challenging the reader to examine what the man’s crying means specifically in terms of his gender.
It’s important, then, to consider how the poem builds a picture of a more traditional and clichéd idea of “manliness” in the first place by drawing attention to many traditionally male-dominated industries. At the Stock Exchange mentioned in the first stanza, men (for the most part) compete with one another to make the best returns on their investments. In the “Greek Club,” men talk business and sports (according to accounts from the time). Later in the poem, the male-dominated police force attempts—and fails—to restrain the crying man. These images subtly reflect masculinity as being tied to competition, money, power, and physicality.
The crying man’s arrival in “Martin Street” thus implicitly becomes a threat to this idea of manliness, offering an alternative vision of male strength through his ability to express his emotion publicly. To that end, the poem makes it clear that the man’s crying isn’t un-masculine: he is described as weeping “not like a child, not like the wind, [but] like a man.” He cries like a man, according to the poem, because there is nothing inherently unmanly about crying. The poem thus turns a common expression about manliness on its head, given that the phrase “like a man” usually means to respond to something (physical pain or bad news, for example) with a lack of emotion.
In turn, the man’s willingness to cry comes to reflect a sense of personal integrity. He has the strength to keep crying even though people are trying to stop him. He doesn’t need to “beat his breast” like an angry ape, which would play into a more violent vision of male expression, but instead maintains “the dignity of weeping.”
This affects the men in the crowd deeply. Those with “the fiercest manhood” and “the toughest reserve” (more traditional clichés about what it means to be a man) are soon “trembl[ing] with silence,” surprised to feel their hearts full of peace and empathy. Even the police (who would have been predominantly men at the time of the poem's writing) find themselves overcome with “longing for tears,” their efforts at restraint failing to stop his emotional outburst.
Of course, not all the men in the crowd react this way. One man describes the crying as “ridiculous,” for example, espousing a more old-fashioned view of masculinity. Overall, though, the crying man represents a challenge to the men of Sydney to examine their own emotional lives. It asks them whether they, too, have the capacity, and strength, to let themselves cry—and if they don’t, what reasons lie behind that inability. Accordingly, the poem undermines the idea that masculinity is incompatible with freely-expressed emotion.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-6
- Line 11
- Lines 12-16
- Lines 25-28
- Lines 32-35
- Lines 44-46
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Religion and Spiritual Transformation
The man who brings Sydney to a halt through the simple act of crying is a Jesus-like figure who inspires a sort of epiphany—a sudden and significant spiritual breakthrough—in many of his onlookers. Yet though some witnesses view the crying man as a “prophet,” he quickly runs away from these “believers” at the end of the poem. The poem thus seems to undermine its own religious significance. Perhaps the poem is saying that metropolitan society is incapable of spiritual transformation, stuck in the tight grip of fast-moving capitalism. Alternatively, maybe the poem is implying that people can’t hold out for a savior to add meaning to their lives.
The Sydney man’s effect on society is brief but profound: everything comes to a stop when he starts crying, and the speaker predicts that people will come to view the man as a prophet—that they will later say he was surrounded by a “halo” or “force.”
The man’s crying is also perhaps an allusion to Jesus crying tears of sorrow in numerous sections of the Bible. Jesus weeps, in part, because of the sorry state of Jerusalem. He grieves that Jerusalem can’t and won’t find peace, and that it won’t receive his love. Perhaps, then, the man’s weeping also signifies some kind of deep and pure sorrow about the humanity’s inability to save itself.
Like Jesus, the crying man provokes strong reactions from the people who encounter him. Some wish to get rid of him, suggesting he is a kind of threat, while others are indifferent. Soon enough, some people view the man as a kind of prophet who brings the “gift of weeping,” which one woman receives by touching him, shaking as she does so. Children, animals, and those “such as look out of Paradise” (perhaps meaning people who have something holy or faithful about them) sit around him.
But while Jesus visited humanity expressly with the intention of teaching and saving them, the man here has no “words” or “messages” to give to the people, only his own expression of “grief” and “sorrow.” The speaker flatly denies that the crying man is anything more than just that: a crying man, not a spiritual leader. There is “no such thing” as the “halo” or “force” that seem to surround him, says the speaker. The man thus doesn’t seem to be a prophet at all—just an ordinary person ascribed extraordinary significance by a society starving for some sort of meaning.
Furthermore, the man himself refuses to let people become his followers. He needs nothing from them, “like the earth.” Perhaps the poem, then, is subtly undermining humanity’s attempt to make sense of its place in the world through religion. If humans were to suddenly disappear the earth would just get on with being the earth. Maybe “acceptance” of its own insignificance—as opposed to God-given purpose—is the best that humanity can achieve, an idea which possibly lies at the heart of the man’s urgent weeping.
In this reading, the most important aspect of the crying man’s message might be that there isn’t one. Whereas Jesus sought to convert people to his cause, the crying man makes a quick getaway from the scene as though he has just robbed a bank, offering no reassurances or hopes for the future. The crying man might then be a kind of anti-religious prophet, reminding people that there is no savior on the way, and that all they can do is “accept” the life right there before them.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-6
- Lines 12-21
- Lines 22-23
- Lines 24-28
- Lines 29-31
- Lines 34-47
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow”
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Lines 1-6
The word goes ...
... can't stop him.The poem starts by setting the scene. The speaker creates a vivid picture of 1960s Sydney, name-checking some key establishments: Repins was a coffee shop; Lorenzinis was a wine bar; Tattersalls was (and still is) a sporting, social, and business club; and the Greek Club was a restaurant. This is clearly a bustling place. The diacope of "goes round" in lines 1 and 2 also helps the reader get a sense of the speed with which news travels around Sydney, suggesting that, on the level of information at least, the people here are pretty connected.
The speaker also implies that many of these spaces are dominated by men—"men" is repeated twice, in fact. Likewise, the "scribblers" (the stock-brokers) at the Stock Exchange would also have been men at the time. Though the poem does refer to women (and children) later on, this opening stanza, combined with the fact that the person "crying in Martin Place" is a "fellow," makes it clear that the poem concerns thematic ideas of masculinity—what it means to be a man and, specifically, to express emotion.
This first stanza also plays with the reader's expectations. The title suggests that the poem has something to do with a rainbow, and the gossip and excitement that travels around Sydney society like electricity suggests that the rainbow has arrived in the poem. But what awaits the reader in line 6 is the reveal that the commotion isn't caused by a rainbow at all, but rather by someone crying who refuses to "stop."
Notice how the poem's syntax (the arrangement of its words and phrases) creates the surprise. The first five lines are one long sentence that builds drama as it unfurls down the page until the colon that abruptly halts things at the end of line 5. Something has suddenly stopped the hustle and bustle of the city. Line 6 then explains what, exactly, has put society on pause—not a rainbow, but rather an outpouring of emotion:
There's a fellow crying in Martin Place. They can't stop him.
That said, it's perhaps not really a true pause and more of a shift in attention. Suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere, this crying man seems like the most important event that the inhabitants of Sydney can focus on.
After the full-stop caesura that follows "Martin Place," the poem reveals that people have tried and failed already to stop the man from crying. The placement of this phrase—"They can't stop him"—after the stop of a caesura is somewhat ironic, the brief pause in the poem quickly aborted to indicate that this is an ongoing situation. It's also worth thinking about what kind of event usually creates this kind of city-wide response. By and large, it's usually some kind of danger that so drastically alters metropolitan daily life—already, then, the poem suggests that the man represents some kind of threat merely though the act of crying. This heightens the sense that the man—and his action—represents something alien and disturbing.
The stanza also makes use of some subtle but effective sound effects. Alliteration in "round Repins" (line 1) conjures the sound of verbal excitement (as though the /r/ sound is a rumor going round), and the internal consonance of "murmur" achieves something similar. The clustering of consonance in line 4—the Stock Exchange scribblers forget the chalk—gives the impression of hurried economic activity.
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Lines 7-11
The traffic in ...
... can stop him. -
Lines 12-16
The man we ...
... sob very loudly— -
Lines 16-18
yet the dignity ...
... pentagram of sorrow, -
Lines 19-21
and uniforms back ...
... for a rainbow. -
Lines 22-25
Some will say, ...
... have been there. -
Lines 25-28
The fiercest manhood, ...
... judgements of peace. -
Lines 28-31
Some in the ...
... and dusty pigeons. -
Lines 32-35
Ridiculous, says a ...
... gift of weeping; -
Lines 36-40
as many as ...
... weeps ignores us, -
Lines 40-43
and cries out ...
... as the sea— -
Lines 44-47
and when he ...
... down Pitt Street.
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“An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow” Symbols
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The Uniforms
In its fourth stanza, the poem refers to "uniforms" who have been trying to restrain the crying man. These "uniforms" are state officials, most likely members of the police force (making the term "uniforms" an example of metonymy). In the poem, they represent the societal status quo in general and the pressure people are under to conform to a certain way of life for fear of being deemed dangerous or simply strange.
Think about the general function of the police in society. In theory, their role is to maintain whatever that society agrees is normal, safe behavior. Their role in real life is often symbolic too, with their presence intended to make an area feel safer (though, in reality, it's far more complicated of course). The uniforms they wear mark out their identity and their role as enforcers of the status quo. Whatever it is about Sydney that makes a man crying in public so unusual, it's an atmosphere that is maintained and overseen by the "uniforms" who patrol it.
Accordingly, it's highly significant that the poem presents these uniformed people as suddenly powerless, their official authority evaporating away in the presence of the crying man's awe-inspiring display of emotion. This draws a link, or, more accurately, an opposition, between the status quo as represented by the "uniforms" and the alternative way of being represented by the crying man.
Perhaps, as enforcers of normality, the "uniforms" are the most affected by the crying man precisely because he creates the kind of spectacle that they are, subconsciously or not, meant to prevent from happening. And it's these "uniforms" who find themselves "long for tears as children for a rainbow" in line 21. Through the man's weeping, they feel a kind of nostalgia for a more emotionally expressive time, as opposed to the way in which they are supposed to indifferently uphold the law.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 19-21: “uniforms back in the crowd who tried to seize him / stare out at him, and feel, with amazement, their minds / longing for tears as children for a rainbow.”
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The Rainbow
The rainbow in the poem can be thought of as symbolic of wonder, beauty, and freedom of expression—all things the poem implies that the modern citizens of Sydney have grown distant from.
Though the poem's title makes the reader anticipate the arrival of a rainbow, no rainbow ever actually appears. Instead, the speaker refers to rainbows as a way of describing the feeling experienced by the "uniforms"—the police—who, having tried and failed to restrain the crying man, find themselves overawed by his expression of emotion. These police officers long "for tears"—the kind that the crying man has in abundance—in the way that children desire to see a rainbow. That is, the officers want to feel intense emotion in the same way that children might hope to spot the colors of a rainbow in the sky.
Rainbows are beautiful and mysterious, and, to a young child especially, look like some kind of magic. The police officers—who stand in for the society-wide status quo—are so far removed from their own emotions that the ability to express them seems faraway and almost illusory. Yet while rainbows may feel extraordinary to children, they are, in actuality, an "ordinary" spectacle that often appear after rainstorms. This suggests that the "uniforms" are mistaken in their belief that the ability to cry freely is something magical and mysterious; it is a beautiful but totally normal part of being human.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 20-21: “their minds / longing for tears as children for a rainbow.”
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“An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
Alliteration is used here and there throughout "An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow." Alliteration can draw readers' attention to various words and phrases, reinforce thematic connections between words, and simply make the poem sound more interesting.
In the first stanza, for example, alliteration works alongside consonance to reflect the city dwellers' chattering, evoking the sound of gossip and intrigue. In line 1, "round Repins" uses a shared /r/ to signify the way in which everyone is talking about the same thing—the crying man. The "Stock Exchange scribblers" phrase has a similar effect, with the added whisper of sibilance evoking that scribbling.
Another striking moment of alliteration is in line 15, in the poem's third stanza:
and does not declaim it, nor beat his breast, nor even
The speaker describes the dignity of the man's weeping, explaining that the man doesn't "sob very loudly." The forceful alliteration is thus somewhat ironic, mimicking the way that it would sound if the man were to "declaim" (shout) it or beat his chest. At the same time, the strength and insistence of this alliteration reflects the crying man's powerful, firm dignity.
In the first line of the following stanza, the poem uses many /h/ sounds:
holds us back from his space, the hollow he makes about him
The breathy /h/ sound evokes the "hollow" space being described. These alliterative sounds also lend a sense of cohesion to the line, making the line itself like a halo or force field.
Where alliteration appears in the poem:- Line 1: “round Repins”
- Line 4: “Stock,” “scribblers”
- Line 9: “crowds come,” “Many”
- Line 10: “minutes,” “main”
- Line 15: “does,” “declaim,” “beat,” “breast”
- Line 17: “holds,” “his,” “hollow,” “he,” “him”
- Line 19: “seize”
- Line 20: “stare”
- Line 22: “Some,” “say”
- Line 24: “Some,” “say,” “stopped”
- Line 28: “Some,” “scream”
- Line 31: “dogs,” “dusty”
- Line 32: “says,” “stops”
- Line 34: “shining,” “her hand”
- Line 35: “shake,” “she”
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Allusion
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Assonance
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Caesura
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Consonance
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Enjambment
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Metaphor
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Repetition
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Simile
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Asyndeton
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"An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Repins
- Lorenzinis
- Tattersalls
- Stock Exchange
- Greek Club
- Martin Place
- George Street
- Declaim
- Hollow
- Pentagram
- Halo
- Reserve
- Slickest Wit
- Concourse
- Paradise
- Writhen
- Sheer
- Pitt Street
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(Location in poem: Line 1: “The word goes round Repins”)
Repins is a long-standing coffee bar in Sydney.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow”
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Form
"An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow" is made up of 47 lines divided into 10 stanzas. The poem begins with a sestet (a six-line stanza), which is followed by eight quintets (five-line stanzas), finally concluding on a single-line set on it own apart from the other stanzas. The quintets might be a subtle nod to the "pentagram of sorrow" mentioned in line 18 (a pentagram is a five-pointed star), while the dangling last line cuts what might be thought of as the final stanza short—just as the crying man leaves his "believers" hanging.
The poem moves through three distinct phases. First, there is the electric excitement that travels quickly around Sydney at the news that there is a "fellow crying in Martin Place." Once everyone has gathered around this "fellow," the speaker focuses on how people react to this public display of emotion. Here, the reader also learns about the mysterious qualities that surround the crying man himself. Then, at the end, the single-line conclusion sees the crying man effectively running away from those who might wish to follow him, the way that the line is set apart representing the way that the man is suddenly gone.
Formally speaking, the poem sits somewhere between a narrative and lyric poetry, with a dash of dramatic monologue thrown in for good measure. The poem tells a story, but it's also self-aware about telling a story. Indeed, part of the speaker's motivation seems to be about getting the truth down on paper, because the speaker anticipates that some will make false claims about what happened when it gets retold in the future. The poem also resembles parts of the biblical narrative of Jesus, particularly in the way that Jesus wept over the state of Jerusalem. That said, Murray's poem is keen to stress the ambiguity of its story, and so ends with little sense of whether anything significant has truly happened.
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Meter
"An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow" does not have a consistent meter and can be thought of as a free verse poem. Generally speaking, the lines are roughly the same length and tend to have five stresses—but this is not a hard and fast rule by any means. The lack of steady meter and rhyme scheme add to the poem's sense of immediacy, of the speaker recounting something in the moment without taking the time to structure those recollections into a specific poetic form. The poem strikes a tone that sounds often like prose, almost even like a live news report in places, e.g.:
The traffic in George Street is banked up for half a mile
and drained of motion.In short, not having a meter allows the poem to unfold more like a traditional story.
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Rhyme Scheme
"An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow" is a free verse poem, lacking both a consistent meter and any kind of rhyme scheme. Perhaps rhyme would have made the poem feel overly ordered, which would be at odds with the tone; part of the poem's power is in the way the spectacle seems to unfold almost in real time, somewhat unpredictably. The lack of rhyme, like the lack of steady meter, makes the poem feel almost like prose.
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“An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow” Speaker
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For the most part, the speaker in "An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow" reads like a third-person observer. The first stanza, for example, presents a kind of omnipresent view of Sydney in which the poem relays the growing exciting about the "fellow crying in Martin Place," word of which travels quickly around the city. The second stanza is similar, focusing on the accumulation of traffic and crowds caused by the spectacle of the crying man.
Suddenly, though, the poem introduces the first-person pronoun in line 12, "we":
The man we surround, the man no one approaches
Now, the reader learns that this is actually a first-hand account of the crying man—that the speaker is one of the individuals in the crowd. This shift in perspective allows for the speaker to both record the different reactions of people who witness the crying man and to offer an intimate experience of the crying man himself.
The speaker doesn't seem to have as strong a reaction to the weeping man as some others, but is preoccupied in giving a truthful and precise account of what happened. The speaker also anticipates that people will make false claims about the spectacle in the future, stating that, though people will probably claim otherwise, "there is no such thing" as a halo.
Nearer to the end of the poem, the speaker shifts to the first-person singular perspective (line 32)—using the words "me" and "I." This perhaps heightens the sense that individuals in the crowd are having their own distinct reactions to the crying man (e.g., the crying woman or the disgusted man who nearly vomits). It's as though the people of Sydney mass into a crowd at the sight of the man, but are then defined by their readiness and willingness to engage with the man's emotional expression.
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“An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow” Setting
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"An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow" is set firmly in mid-20th century Sydney, a large city in Australia. The poem thus draws on Murray's own autobiographical experience as Sydney inhabitant—he both studied and worked there for a number of years.
In the poem, Sydney represents the hustle and bustle of modern life in general. Normally, the city is a hive of economic activity. It's also a place of gossip and intrigue, in which news travels fast. Indeed, this how the poem opens—with "word" and "murmur[s]" quickly getting around Sydney like electricity.
The setting thus becomes an important part of the poem. The fact that Sydney is usually so fast-paced makes its being brought to a halt by a crying man all the more remarkable. What is it, the reader wonders, about the man's public expression of emotion that can cast such a strong power over an entire city?
In this way, the poem feels almost like a biblical parable, an account of a Jesus-like figure coming to a new town and leaving it utterly transformed. Of course, it's not clear if anything really changes in the poem—or if Sydney goes back to being Sydney as soon as the crying man "hurries off down Pitt Street."
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Literary and Historical Context of “An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow”
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Literary Context
Les Murray was one of Australia's most prominent poets, active from the mid-20th century until his death in 2019. He has published vast amounts of poetry and other literary works, including plays.
"An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow" is taken from Murray's first collection, The Weatherboard Cathedral (published in 1969), and is probably his best-known poem. Much of this collection is set in more rural environments, which Murray's poetry often implies a preference for over the more built-up metropolises of the modern world. Indeed, this particular poem seems to argue that something fundamental to humanity is lost in the hustle and bustle of city life—perhaps the ability to express emotion fully and without shame. Poems like "When I Was Alive" from the same collection show a longing for living off the land, and for a time before the "endless town."
The alienating effect of living in a big city is a common subject in 20th-century poetry, found in works as various as "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats's "The Second Coming" (which also shares a quasi-religious atmosphere with Murray's poem). Other poets, of course, embraced the metropolitan environment as one rich with poetic material—e.g., poets like Frank O'Hara.
Murray was a key figure in Australian poetry and had close connections with other important poets from the same country. He was friends with Clive James—perhaps the only other Australian poet who is as well-known as Murray around the world—from his university days. James called Murray a true "agrarian" poet, meaning that the rural environment is seen somehow as the one more appropriate to human existence. Peter Porter, another famous Australian poet, called Murray the "custodian of Australia's soul"—and it does seem that in this poem Murray is striking at the heart of modern city life, asking whether it really speaks to the humankind's fundamental nature.
Historical Context
"An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow" offers a vivid snapshot of Sydney in the mid-20th century. Like a number of similarly-sized cities around the world, Sydney is one that grew quickly through industry and economic activity. The modern city as it is now is relatively young, settled by the British who initially used Sydney as a penal colony.
The poem gives the impression of a fast-paced environment governed by money. The first stanza is full of transactions and, indeed, one of the ultimate examples of capitalist society—the Stock Exchange. It's hard to imagine Sydney really coming to a stop for a crying man, and that is in part the poem's power. It asks the reader to consider whether this kind of pure emotional expression really fits in with the values of the modern metropolis.
The poem also plays with the quasi-religious aspects of its story, the crying man fulfilling a similar (though much smaller) role to that of Jesus Christ. Jesus is depicted as weeping numerous times in the Bible, and, particularly relevant here, he cries over the state of Jerusalem, which he feels has gone too far down a certain path to achieve its now salvation. But the crying man in this poem has a less obvious purpose. He seems to bring an important message, but that message is either intentionally out-of-reach or simply impossible to understand.
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More “An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow” Resources
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External Resources
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Murray's Life and Work — An informative article about Murray produced by the Guardian after his death.
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More Poems by Murray — A generous collection of Murray's poem on his own website.
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A Reading of the Poem — The poem read by Thomas Keneally for an album of Australia poetry.
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Murray and His Influences — The poet in discussion about his own work and the works of others that were important to him.
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Murray Reads from His Own Work — A selection of poems read by the poet himself.
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