Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, EL MAGHARA, by EDWIN GERARD


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

EL MAGHARA, by                    
First Line: Out east on the sands of distraction that dip to the peep of the sun
Last Line: Then back over razor-like edges we trekked through the desert again.
Alternate Author Name(s): Gerardy
Subject(s): Cavalry; War


OUT east on the sands of distraction that dip to the peep of the sun
We waited the coming of action and sighed for the sound of a gun.
Before we trekked over the waste in the night to Maghara, and back,
We longed for the clatter of haste in the ruck of a mounted attack.

We waited the dying of day with impatience and simmering zeal,
We watched the red west make away with the sun, and the sombre dusk steal
All shadowy-slow and uncertain to huddle the breeze-bartered sands
In folds like the folds of a curtain let loose from invisible hands.

Like ghosts in the gloaming, ill-fated to march to obscurity's heart,
We sprang to the stirrup and waited awhile in the saddle the start.
A hush that was heavy and solemn grew tenser than tightening fear,
And broke when the head of the column led off with the murmuring rear.

Hearse-slow, as the mourners who follow a corpse to the graveyard, we went
To gain from the depths of the hollow a point like the peak of a tent.
The stars leapt ashine as we travelled wide-eyed in the wilderness white;
The moon swung aloft and unravelled a ribbon of pad through the night.

Far over the wind-sharpened edges of razor-backed ridges that lift
Like pyramid summits and ledges, we surged through the billow-like drift;
And discourse was strangely forbidden and hushed by the labouring breath
Of animals never yet ridden so far in the silence of death.

Like leaders a-tug at the traces, and hitched to a floundering gun,
We clambered from hoof-hollowed places where little sand rivulets run;
From gorges that muffled the task of each man and his labouring beast,
We climbed 'neath the smothering mask of a mist that came out of the east.

We halted, unsaddled, and swiftly we hung on the tibbin and corn;
Like corpses a-sprawl in the drift we slept fast till the glimmer of morn.
We lay in a wind-deepened hollow that gaped with a seeming desire
To slowly envelop and swallow the force ere the east leapt afire.

We hid till the vivid enamour of eve with its crimson-lit wiles
Shed gold in the sweltering glamour, and mellowed the sun-smitten miles;
We lay till the camels were crawling all heavily laden and dun
Out east, while the shadows were falling to smother the vanishing sun.

In serpentine fashion out-stealing the columns writhed hillward to get
A glimpse of a low moon revealing high mountains in stark silhouette,
When sudden there came without warning a mist like a scumbling pall
That covered us as with an awning and hemmed us around with a wall.

The sun pierced the mist with a glimmer of lances down-thrust from the sky,
And burst in a soul-stirring shimmer that melted the clouds floating high.
We climbed from the gloom of a bitter grey waste to a plateau of gold
And gazed on its dazzling glitter like travel-worn pilgrims of old.

We swept over gravel-strewn spaces, the hoofs crunched the silence to flight,
And into white, haggard-worn faces there crept a warm flush of delight;
We rode to the lilt of rude measure, when sudden a view of the range
Fed hungering eyes like a treasure in magical regions and strange.

The horses swept forward! The clatter of galloping hoofs echoed strange,
Along with the opening chatter of maxim-guns finding the range.
The rifles cracked fitful and ragged, the horses tugged hard on the bit,
And sometimes an animal staggered, but seldom a rider was hit.

We hurried for safety, for cover—tense-hearted, with never a warp;
And bullets strummed under and over like tautly drawn strings of a harp.
The Turks, in a wicked endeavour, were sniping with purpose to stem
The tide of a race I shall never forget—the Anzacs were swooping on them!

Distracted we travelled, worn wretches we crawled through the fog-ridden night,
To burst on the green-dotted stretches in waves of unbounded delight.
We leapt from a vision-dispelling grey waste to the sunlight of God,
Which loses its charm in the telling and dies on the grass-matted sod.

We felt the hard turf lying under, in one panting gallop for life—
Oh! all to the shattering thunder of guns in a spasm of strife!
And high on the crag-shadowed ledges we hurriedly covered the slain;
Then back over razor-like edges we trekked through the desert again.





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