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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
DUSK ON ENGLISH BAY, by EARL (EARLE) BIRNEY Poet's Biography First Line: The lighting rooms perfect a chequerboard Last Line: Any clutch of ours can hold this precious night. Subject(s): Dusk; England; English | |||
The lighting rooms perfect a chequerboard Across apartment boxes. Through the popcorn Reek, hotdogs and chips, the air lets fall A rain of quiet coolness on the flesh. The calling Bathers trot the footpocked sand on legs Unsexed by distance, waving arms severed With twilight. From the whitening ribs of the raft divers Flash cream arcs across the expiring Sunset, and are quenched. Beyond the bay the files Of regimented lamps are pulsing evenly On the long tamed whale of Point Grey. The evening Star detaches and floats into the chartreuse heavens, An arrested rocket. The moon, behind a row Of moons along the promenade, contracts and yellows Upward. Night's dissolvent eats into the west, Browning the stippled mauve, the copper sulphate, Paling and paling the opal, melting the latest Speck of robin's eggshell into the Gulf of Georgia, And ever over the Pacific pursuing tomorrow's Sun. But tomorrow's sun is clean escaped And rushes down through Asian skies, garish With burst of shell and unarrested rocket, And burns on Libyan sands, by bombs Cratered and red with libations poured to the guns. Past Narvik's blanching hulks tomorrow's sun Is flying, over the Mediterranean's smudged Embattled sharks, and the sailors quenched, and is climbing To stricken dawn in England, widening his light On limbs unsexed and severed, and the rain of iron Cooling the flesh, and the stench of the flesh cooled, While the flame untamed probes the tenement ruins. Speeding and soaring he comes, the Atlantic sighting, And there is no Joshua can brake his flight, nor Any clutch of ours can hold this precious night. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...NINETEEN FORTY by NORMAN DUBIE GHOSTS IN ENGLAND by ROBINSON JEFFERS STAYING UP FOR ENGLAND by LIAM RECTOR STONE AND FLOWER by KENNETH REXROTH THE HANGED MAN by KENNETH REXROTH ENGLISH TRAIN COMPARTMENT by JOHN UPDIKE ANGLOSAXON STREET by EARL (EARLE) BIRNEY |
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