Kangaroo

One standing with his back to the sun;— The dusk on his body glows Such colors!—the pregnant night is begun, And I am lost as he goes,

With the rush of the softening fields, O my heart bows to earth! For the lilt of the rain, the music yields To the pulse of its worth.

O how the wind sings—how the stars pulse, In the curve of the earth’s wide dome, As my heart runs wild, like the fluttering horse, I am far from the sun, far from home!

Yet I know the feel of the world on my skin, I crash, fall in from above, Oh, naked I am where the dusk covers in, And I leap after the starry dove.

• David Campbell