The Killer

death fear narrative poem dark haunting

The Killer - meaning Summary

Violence Becomes an Inner Memory

Judith Wright's The Killer follows a speaker who encounters a dark, dangerous creature at a creek and strikes it repeatedly. The act of killing is physical and urgent, but the creature eludes final destruction and returns as an internal, lingering presence. The closing image of ants at the slain animal’s eye highlights nature’s indifference and suggests that violence leaves a persistent mental trace rather than resolving fear or responsibility.

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The day was clear as fire, the birds sang frail as glass, when thirsty I came to the creek and fell by its side in the grass. My breast on the bright moss and shower-embroidered weeks, my lips to the live water I saw him turn in the reeds. Black horror sprang from the dark in a violent birth, and through its cloth of grass I felt the clutch of earth. O beat him into the ground. O strike him till he dies- or else your life itself drains through those colourless eyes. I struck again and again Slender in black and red he lies, and his icy glance turns outward clear and dead. But nimble my enemy as water is, or wind. He has slipped from his death aside and vanished into my mind He has vanished whence he came, my nimble enemy; and the ants come out to the snake and drink at his shallow eye.