Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

Stephen, wake up! There's some one at the gate. Quick, to the window ... Oh, you'll be too late! I hear the front door opening quietly.

I THE RETURN He went, and he was gay to go:

A scent of Esparto grass, and again I recall That hour we spent by the weir of the paper-mill Watching together the curving thunderous fall

What large, dark hands are those at the window Lifted, grasping in the yellow light Which makes its way through the curtain web

All night I lay on Devil's Edge, Along an overhanging ledge Between the sky and sea:

Black spars of driftwood burn to peacock flames, Sea-emeralds and sea-purples and sea-blues, And all the innumerable ever-changing hues

In each black tile a mimic fire's aglow, And in the hearthlight old mahogany, Ripe with stored sunshine that in Mexico

All night under the moon Plovers are flying Over the dreaming meadows of silvery light,

Stuck in a bottle on the window-sill, In the cold gaslight burning gaily red Against the luminous blue of London night,

[Scene: The big tent-stable of a travelling circus. On the ground near the entrance GENTLEMAN JOHN, stableman and general odd-job man, lies smoking beside MERRY ANDREW, the clown. GENTLEMAN JOHN is a little hunched man with a sensitive face and dreamy eyes. MERRY ANDREW, who is resting between the afternoon and evening performances, with his clown's hat lying beside him, wears a crimson wig, and a baggy suit of orange-coloured cotton, patterned with purple cats. His face is chalked dead-white, and painted with a set grin, so that it is impossible to see what manner of man he is. In the back-ground are camels and elephants feeding, dimly visible in the steamy dusk of the tent.] Gentleman John: And then consider camels: only think

We who are left, how shall we look again Happily on the sun or feel the rain Without remembering how they who went

Who is that woman, Philip, standing there Before the mirror doing up her hair? You're dreaming, Phoebe, or the morning light

Only the footprints of the partridge run Over the billowy drifts on the mountain-side; And now on level wings the brown birds glide

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,

Your face was lifted to the golden sky Ablaze beyond the black roofs of the square, As flame on flame leapt, flourishing in air

Wind-flicked and ruddy her young body glowed In sunny shallows, splashing them to spray; But when on rippled, silver sand she lay,

Suddenly, out of dark and leafy ways, We came upon the little house asleep In cold blind stillness, shadowless and deep,

In smoky lamplight of a Smyrna Caf', He saw them, seven solemn negroes dancing, With faces rapt and out-thrust bellies prancing

(R.B.) He's gone. I do not understand.

In dream, again within the clean, cold hell Of glazed and aching silence he was trapped; And, closing in, the blank walls of his cell

My hands were hot upon a hare, Half-strangled, struggling in a snare, - My knuckles at her warm wind-pipe,

Somewhere, somewhen I've seen, But where or when I'll never know, Parrots of shrilly green

As a blue-necked mallard alighting in a pool Among marsh-marigolds and splashing wet Green leaves and yellow blooms, like jewels set

Through the pale green forest of tall bracken-stalks, Whose interwoven fronds, a jade-green sky, Above me glimmer, infinitely high,