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Home  »  The New Poetry  »  Color

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Color

By Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

A BLUE-BLACK Nubian plucking oranges

At Jaffa by a sea of malachite,

In red tarboosh, green sash, and flowing white

Burnous—among the shadowy memories

That haunt me yet by these bleak northern seas

He lives for ever in my eyes’ delight,

Bizarre, superb in young immortal might—

A god of old barbaric mysteries.

Maybe he lived a life of lies and lust,

Maybe his bones are now but scattered dust;

Yet, for a moment he was life supreme

Exultant and unchallenged: and my rhyme

Would set him safely out of reach of time

In that old heaven where things are what they seem.