Poésie illustrée : sur la route de Withernsea

Harry Clarke - Illustration pour le poème de H. H. Abbott - Black and White
The Year's at the Spring, An anthology of recent poetry,
Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh, 1920
Source : Art of Narrative via Thorsteinulf



Black and white

I met a man along the road
       To Withernsea;
Was ever anything so dark, so pale
    As he?
His hat, his clothes, his tie, his boots
  Were black as black
      Could be,
And midst of all was a cold white face,
And eyes that looked wearily.

The road was bleak and straight and flat
      To Withernsea,
Gaunt poles with shrilling wires their weird
      Did dree;
On the sky stood out, on the swollen sky
   The black blood veins
     Of tree
After tree, as they beat from the face
Of the wind which they could not flee.

And in the fields along the road
      To Withernsea,
Swart crows sat huddled on the ground
      Disconsolately,
While overhead the seamews wheeled, and skirled
      In glee;
But the black cows stood, and cropped where they stood,
      And never heeded thee,
O dark pale man, with the weary eyes,
      On the road to Withernsea.

H. H. Abbott