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Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

Nine O’clock News

“Only just one plane lost”– the suave announcer
broadcasts the news of the successful raid;
and the lone mother knitting by the hearthstone
Trembles, afraid,
As in her anguished sight
In flame a bomber crashes through the night.
 
“Only one plane was lost”– just five words spoken
glibly– and through the quiet of the room
she hears them as an iron clangour sounding
the knell of doom,
and sees within the fire
a broken body on a blazing pyre.

#EnglishWriters

Autres oeuvres par Wilfrid Wilson Gibson...
Before Action

I SIT beside the brazier’s glow, And, drowsing in the heat, A dream of daffodils that blow And lambs that frisk and bleat— Black lambs that frolic in the sno…
Nightmare

They gave him a shilling, They gave him a gun; And so he’s gone killing The Germans, my son. I dream of that shilling—
 1
Between the Lines

When consciousness came back, he f… Between the opposing fires, but co… On which hand were his friends; an… For him to turn was chancy—bullet… Whistling and shrieking over him,…
Tenants

Suddenly, out of dark and leafy wa… We came upon the little house asle… In cold blind stillness, shadowles… In the white magic of the full moo… Strangers without the gate, we sto…
The Ice

HER day out from the workhouse-wa… A grey-haired woman, decent and pr… With prim black bonnet and neat pa… Among the other children by the st… And with grave relish eats a penny…
The Lodging House

WHEN up the fretful, creaking st… From floor to floor I creep On tiptoe, lest I wake from their… The unknown lodgers lying, layer o…
The Messages

“I cannot quite remember.... Ther… Dropt dead beside me in the trench… Whispered their dying messages to… Back from the trenches, more dead… Stone-deaf and dazed, and with a b…
 2
Fire

In each black tile a mimic fire’s… And in the hearthlight old mahogan… Ripe with stored sunshine that in… Poured like gold wine into the liv… Summer on summer through a century…
The Dancing Seal

When we were building Skua Light— The first men who had lived a nigh… Upon that deep-sea Isle— As soon as chisel touched the ston… The friendly seals would come asho…
The Raining

THE night I left my father said: “You’ll go and do some stupid thin… You’ve no more sense in that fat h… Than silly Billy Witterling. ”Not sense to come in when it rain…
Hoops

Scene: The big tent-stable of a t… ground near the entrance GENTL… stableman and general odd-job man,… MERRY ANDREW, the clown.… hunched man with a sensitive face…
The Question

I WONDER if the old cow died or… Gey bad she was the night I left,… Dick reckoned she would mend. He… At least he fancies so himself, do… Dick knows a lot. But maybe I did…
Air Raid

Night shatters in mid-heaven: the… The roar of planes, the crash of b… The unshackled sky pandemonium stu… The senses to indifference, when a… Of masonry near by startles awake,
In the Ambulance

“Two rows of cabbages, Two curly-greens, Two rows of early peas, Two of kidney-beans.” That’s what he is muttering,
Hit

Out of the sparkling sea I drew my tingling body clear, and… On a low ledge the livelong summer… Basking, and watching lazily White sails in Falmouth Bay.



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