Comete - Analysis

Hair as a force that gets there first

The poem’s central claim is that this woman’s hair is not just part of her appearance but a kind of independent presence: it announces her, extends her, and briefly makes her feel larger than her body. The opening line already tilts the world into a slightly enchanted angle: Uphill in Melbourne on a beautiful day is ordinary, but then the speaker sees a woman walking ahead of her hair. That reversal is the poem’s first jolt. Hair is supposed to trail; here it leads, as if it has its own intention. The tone is delighted and precise, as though the speaker is trying to stay faithful to what he actually saw while also admitting that the sight pushes him into metaphor.

Teak, fracture, sway: the hair made material

Murray makes the hair feel heavy, valuable, and vulnerable all at once by likening it to teak oiled soft that can fracture and sway. Teak suggests polish and richness; fracture suggests brittleness. The hair hung to her heels, a physical fact that turns into a social one when it seconded her like a pencilled retinue. The woman is not described in detail; the hair is. That choice matters: the poem isn’t objectifying her body so much as tracking the odd way a single feature can become a whole entourage, a moving “court” that follows and validates the person who carries it. At the same time, calling the retinue pencilled keeps it light and sketch-like, as if the “followers” are drawn by the mind as much as seen by the eye.

An unscrolling title across ploughland and dress

The hair becomes a kind of writing: an unscrolling title. The word title implies naming and ownership, and the poem flirts with that power by letting the hair “title” the space around her: to ploughland, and also to the ripe rows of dress. The effect is double. On one hand, this is pure abundance: the hair is a banner of vitality, a visible surplus. On the other hand, the poem hints at how easily such abundance can turn possessive or mythic, as if her life is being claimed by an aesthetic sign. The countryside language (ploughland, rows, ripe) quietly turns a city street into a field, suggesting that what the speaker really sees is a harvest of motion and shine, not just a woman walking.

A wing that can’t lift: beauty’s limitation

The poem then tightens into a key tension: the hair is a sheathed wing that couldn’t fly her at all. It can only fly itself, and perhaps her spirits. This is where the admiration gets an edge. The hair looks like an instrument of escape, but it cannot change the facts of gravity, age, or circumstance; it can only move as hair. Yet the speaker grants it a real effect: it lifts mood, not body. That distinction keeps the poem from becoming simple celebration. The hair is powerful, but its power is confined to the realm of feeling, impression, and the brief social radiance of being seen.

What isn’t seen: the hair’s “attempts” and the woman’s privacy

In the middle, the speaker notices how the hair interacts with her face: its abstracted attempts on her mouth weren’t seen. That small sentence adds privacy and a touch of loneliness. The hair is doing things—showering, tenting—but the world notices Just the detail that swam in its flow-lines. In other words, people take in the surface pattern and miss the intimate closeness of it, the way it nearly touches speech and breath. The contradiction is sharp: the hair is extravagantly visible, yet something about its actual contact with her life remains unseen. The woman is both displayed and protected; the same curtain that makes her “comet-like” also hides the smallest gestures.

Comet-like toward the sun: a climax of motion and self

The ending gathers the earlier images into a final, clean trajectory: as she paced on, comet-like, face to the sun. A comet is brilliance with a tail, a body defined by what trails behind it—exactly the poem’s premise, except that earlier she seemed to walk ahead of it. That subtle conflict makes the last image feel earned: she is both the comet and the one who outpaces the comet’s own sign. The tone here is not worshipful so much as clear-eyed wonder. The hair has been a retinue, a title, a wing, and a weather system, but the woman’s forward-facing posture—her face turned to the sun—keeps the center of agency with her. The poem ends by giving her direction, not just adornment.

A sharper thought: does the “largesse” belong to her, or to looking?

The speaker calls the hair A largesse of life and self, but the poem also shows how that “gift” is produced by attention: by the speaker’s urge to name it as title and wing. If her hair can only “fly” her spirits, then the real flight may be the observer’s, carried by metaphor while she simply keeps walking uphill. The poem makes you wonder whether the richest thing here is her hair, or the mind trying to keep up with it.