Wilfrid Wilson Gibson Head Poems
- 1. Cruelty And Love
What large, dark hands are those at the window
Lifted, grasping in the yellow light
Which makes its way through the curtain web
At my heart to-night?
... - 2. The Hare
My hands were hot upon a hare,
Half-strangled, struggling in a snare, -
My knuckles at her warm wind-pipe,
When suddenly, her eyes shot back,
... - 3. Hoops
[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:
... - 4. Geraniums
Stuck in a bottle on the window-sill,
In the cold gaslight burning gaily red
Against the luminous blue of London night,
These flowers are mine: while somewhere out of sight
... - 5. The Gorse
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
Crushed stifling on him ... when the bracken snapped,
... - 6. Devil's Edge
All night I lay on Devil's Edge,
Along an overhanging ledge
Between the sky and sea:
And as I rested 'waiting sleep,
... - 7. The Stone
"And will you cut a stone for him,
To set above his head?
And will you cut a stone for him--
A stone for him?" she said.
... - 8. The Crane
The biggest crane on earth, it lifts
Two hundred ton more easily
Than I can lift my heavy head:
And when it swings, the whole world shifts,
... - 9. Rupert Brooke
I
Your face was lifted to the golden sky
Ablaze beyond the black roofs of the square
...
