Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
Reading edition
Wings
As a blue-necked mallard alighting in a pool Among marsh-marigolds and splashing wet Green leaves and yellow blooms, like jewels set In bright, black mud, with clear drops crystal-cool, Bringing keen savours of the sea and stir Of windy spaces where wild sunsets flame To that dark inland dyke, the thought of her Into my brooding stagnant being came. And all my senses quickened into life, Tingling and glittering, and the salt and fire Sang through my singing blood in eager strife Until through crystal airs we seemed to be Soaring together, one fleet-winged desire Of windy sunsets and the wandering sea.
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The Parrots
Somewhere, somewhen I've seen, But where or when I'll never know, Parrots of shrilly green With crests of shriller scarlet flying Out of black cedars as the sun was dying Against cold peaks of snow. From what forgotten life Of other worlds I cannot tell Flashes that screeching strife; Yet the shrill colour and shrill crying Sing through my blood and set my heart replying And jangling like a bell.
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The Cakewalk
In smoky lamplight of a Smyrna Café, He saw them, seven solemn negroes dancing, With faces rapt and out-thrust bellies prancing In a slow solemn ceremonial cakewalk, Dancing and prancing to the sombre tom-tom Thumped by a crookbacked grizzled negro squatting. And as he watched ... within the steamy twilight Of swampy forest in rank greenness rotting, That sombre tom-tom at his heartstrings strumming Set all his sinews twitching, and a singing Of cold fire through his blood — and he was dancing Among his fellows in the dank green twilight With naked, oiled, bronze-gleaming bodies swinging In a rapt holy everlasting cakewalk For evermore in slow procession prancing.
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Driftwood
Black spars of driftwood burn to peacock flames, Sea-emeralds and sea-purples and sea-blues, And all the innumerable ever-changing hues That haunt the changeless deeps but have no names, Flicker and spire in our enchanted sight: And as we gaze, the unsearchable mystery, The unfathomed cold salt magic of the sea, Shines clear before us in the quiet night. We know the secret that Ulysses sought, That moonstruck mariners since time began Snatched at a drowning hazard — -strangely brought To our homekeeping hearts in drifting spars We chanced to kindle under the cold stars — The secret in the ocean-heart of man.
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Quiet
Only the footprints of the partridge run Over the billowy drifts on the mountain-side; And now on level wings the brown birds glide Following the snowy curves, and in the sun Bright birds of gold above the stainless white They move, and as the pale blue shadows move, With them my heart glides on in golden flight Over the hills of quiet to my love. Storm-shaken, racked with terror through the long Tempestuous night, in the quiet blue of morn Love drinks the crystal airs, and peace newborn Within his troubled heart, on wings aglow Soars into rapture, as from the quiet snow The golden birds; and out of silence, song.
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Reveille
Still bathed in its moonlight slumber, the little white house by the cedar Stands silent against the red dawn; And nothing I know of who sleeps there, to the travail of day yet unwakened, Behind the blue curtains undrawn: But I dream as we march down the roadway, ringing loud and white-rimed in the moonlight, Of a little dark house on a hill Wherein when the battle is over, to the rapture of day yet unwakened, We shall slumber as dreamless and still.
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