Loveliness [poem by Rex Ingamells]

[Editor: This poem by Rex Ingamells was published in Forgotten People (1936).]

Loveliness

Loveliness swims
In the lake as the light dims,
Skims,
With vague form,
In the warm
Gold waves, far out —
Where black duck silently drift about
Before they rise with a dark shout . . .
And loveliness lies,
With sad eyes,
By old trees sombring the water-rims.

The dark shout comes:
The flight forsakes
The surface here for the sky lakes
Beyond the gums . . .

The red smoke of day
Is blown away,
While the moon gains brightness and the leaves say
That loveliness lies,
With a power of mystery glowing in her eyes,
By the old trees with the twisted limbs,
At the shore-rims.

Now I see her — see her rise,
Wading with wave-dusk to the thighs,
Under the moon-drowned blue of southern skies.

Source:
Rex Ingamells, Forgotten People, F. W. Preece & Sons, Adelaide, 1936, page 39