Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, WHEELS, by WILFRID WILSON GIBSON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

WHEELS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: To safety of the curb he thrust the crone
Last Line: His young wife gravely knitting by his side.


To safety of the curb he thrust the crone:
When a shaft took him in the back, and prone
He tumbled heavily, but all unheard
Amid the scurry of wheels that crashed and whirred
About his senseless head -- his helmet crushed
Like crumpled paper by a car that rushed
Upon him unaware. And as he lay
He heard again the wheels he'd heard all day
About him on point-duty ... only now
Each red-hot wheel ran searing over his brow --
A sizzling star with hub and spokes and tyre
One monstrous Catherine-wheel of sparkling fire
Whirring down windy tunnels of the night...
That Catherine-wheel, somehow it will not light --
Fixed to the broken paling; and the pin
Pricks the boy's finger as he jabs it in:
He sucks the salty blood -- the spiteful thing
Fires, whizzing, sputtering sparks: he feels them sting
His wincing cheek; and, on the damp night-air,
The stench of burnt saltpetre and singed hair...
While still he lies and listens without fear
To the loud traffic rumbling in his ear --
Wheels rumbling in his ear, and through his brain
For evermore, a never-ending train
Of scarlet postal-vans that whirl one red
Perpetual hot procession through his head --
His head that's just a clanking, clattering mill
Of grinding wheels ... and down an endless hill
After his hoop he runs, a little lad,
Barefooted 'neath the stars, in nightshirt clad --
And stumbles into bed, the stars all gone
Though in his head the hoop keeps running on
And on and on: his head grown big and wide
Holds all the windy night and stars inside...
And still within a hair's breadth of his ear
The crunch and gride of wheels rings sharp and clear --
Huge lumbering wagons, crusted axle-deep
With country marl, their drivers half-asleep
Against green toppling mounds of cabbages
Still crisp with dewy airs, or stacks of cheese
Smelling of Arcady, till all the sky
In clouds of cheese and cabbages rolls by --
Great golden cheeses wheeling through the night,
And giant cabbages of emerald light
That tumble after, scattering crystal drops...
While in his ear the grinding never stops --
Wheels grinding asphalt ... then a high-piled wain
Of mignonette in boxes ... and again,
A baby at his father's cottage-door
He toddles, treading on his pinafore,
And tumbles headlong in a bed of bloom,
Half-smothered in the deep, sweet honeyed gloom
Of crushed, wet blossom, and the hum of bees --
Big bumble-bees that buzz through flowery trees --
Grows furious ... changing to a roar of wheels
And honk of hooting horns: and now he feels
That all the cars in London filled with light
Are bearing down upon him through the night,
As out of hall and theatre there pour
White-shouldered women, ever more and more,
Bright-eyed, with flashing teeth, borne in a throng
Of purring, glittering cars, ten thousand strong:
Each drowsy dame, and eager chattering lass
Laughing unheard within her box of glass...
And then great darkness, and a clanging bell --
Clanging beneath the hollow dome of hell
Aglow like burnished copper; and a roar
Of wheels and wheels and wheels for evermore,
As engine after engine crashes by
With clank and rattle under that red sky
Dropping a trail of burning coals behind,
That scorch his eyeballs till he lies half-blind,
Smouldering to cinder in a vasty night
Of wheeling worlds and stars in whirring flight,
And suns that blaze in thunderous fury on
For ever and for ever, yet are gone
Ere he can gasp to see them ... head to heels
Slung round a monstrous red-hot hub, that wheels
Across infinity, with spokes of fire
That dwindle slowly till the shrinking tyre
Is clamped like aching ice about his head...
He smells clean acid smells: and safe in bed
He wakens in a lime-washed ward, to hear
Somebody moaning almost in his ear,
And knows that it's himself that moans: and then,
Battling his way back to the world of men,
He sees with leaden eyelids opening wide,
His young wife gravely knitting by his side.





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