One perfect, windless, starlit, moonless night
One perfect, windless, starlit, moonless night,
a mopoke iterating far below,
high on a ridge, exposed, as though in flight,
the fire diminished to a warmer glow,
I turned a magic modern knob. And then
heard Gielgud reading Eliot's Four Quartets.
Maybe some time the chants of stone age men
recalling dream-time tales no tribe forgets
reiterated like the mopokes song
along this crest beneath the moving stars.
This voice, this author, clearly both belong
to peaks of man's achievment. Nothing mars
perfection. It ends: and nature holds its breath.
This night will comfort me until my death
a mopoke iterating far below,
high on a ridge, exposed, as though in flight,
the fire diminished to a warmer glow,
I turned a magic modern knob. And then
heard Gielgud reading Eliot's Four Quartets.
Maybe some time the chants of stone age men
recalling dream-time tales no tribe forgets
reiterated like the mopokes song
along this crest beneath the moving stars.
This voice, this author, clearly both belong
to peaks of man's achievment. Nothing mars
perfection. It ends: and nature holds its breath.
This night will comfort me until my death
[from the Desert of my Heart and Mind by F.J.A.Pockley 1912-1990]
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