Читать книгу The Parthenon - George Hobson - Страница 10

One by one the gray-winged oblongs with lemon beaks

Lift on updrafts off the bay where wind knocks cliffs,

Then float, feint left, right, tilt wings, glide downwind,

Make their flight over privet, clumped pines, brambles,

While their wood-and-canvas cousins on the water below

Take the same hefting wind and zigzag seaward.

Sails like triangular mosaics stud the cobalt,

Scattered shards and flakes of blue and gold;

On the ocean’s edge, where sky and water fuse in haze,

The colored patches blur and disappear.

The jigsaw bay of marble is a puzzle piece

Inserted in the worn brown perforated coastal rock.

The water’s surface under wind’s lash knots and wrinkles

Like the cracked rock puckering the headlands.

Waves slap shorelines and scour rock pools;

They swallow distant outcrops and seethe on reefs;

Wind shears their wooly fleece.

Near land algae stain the sea floor green,

Gulls’ shadows brush the water’s skin,

Diving cormorants throw up nosegays of spray.

The garrulous wind cruising in the Norfolk pines

Murmurs to the sonorous waters the secrets of Creation.

Waves and trees converse. Sea and earth, bonded,

Hung by the Creator in the void, rejoice.