"The Killer" (1947) is a poem by Australian poet Judith Wright.
It was originally published in the literary jounal Southerly in December 1947, and was subsequently reprinted in the author's single-author collections and a number of Australian poetry anthologies.
The poet wanders down by a creek to take her rest and to get a drink of water. She is surprised by a black snake and lashes out to defend herself.
Andrew Taylor, in his book Reading Australian Poetry, commented that "the poem is an articulation of guilt â not so much simply guilt at having killed something presumed innocent, but guilt at having failed to recognise the 'nmble enemy' as being within herself, and this having killed."
In a review of the poet's collection A Human Pattern : Selected Poems in Poetry Beverley Bie Brahic noted that parts of this poem might owe something to Emily Dickinson, though she went on to add: "if the corseted stanzas, with their inversions and apostrophes ('O move in me ...'), have a whiff of the hand-me-down, Wright's subjects are brand new. As Heaney reveals rural Northern Ireland to us, so Wright trains her refreshingly flinty eye on the settlers of rural Australia."
After the poem's initial publication in Southerly it was reprinted as follows: