Paul Mirabile

Winter Snow at Nightfall

The first snow of Winter tumbled down all through the day,
So flaky, silent, glittering like a sea’s spindrift spray.

Creeping twilight enlumined the flakes with silvery gleams
Whose sparkles were limned against a mottled moon’s lunar beams.

From my bay-window I enjoyed the soundless scene
The bright fire in the hearth accompanying the wondrous sheen.

Where in the festooned forest the banked snow coating the rooty earth
Began hardening into bolts of velvety ice woven into rolls of bluish mirth.

The landscape’s shifting shades aroused such a rapturous souvenir
Of my cherished childhood days, all cheery, secure, lovingly dear.

Soon darkness gradually mantled the scene so ardently enjoyed
As the weary lids of my eyes grew weighty, yet toiled

To remain alive to the fabulous ice-laden forest’s textured contours
So that the inner scenes of my souvenirs ‘aligned’ with those outdoors.

Alas the logs of the hearth yielded the remnants of their resinous scent
And the glowing warmth of the fire had all but been spent.

Whereupon a cold blackness enshrouded the bluish mirth and my eyes
With a sudden chilling vision of a looming, fearful, soundless demise.

Twilight

Behold the fiery blaze of Twilight
The buff Rim sinking slow into Eventide ;
Over sienna burnt plaines and fields of rye,
Over fossilised forests, dales and mountain side.

The Gloaming and the Mirk : Twilight !
Accursed Figures drift between the Light,
Here a bark, there a howl, ô equivocal sight
Bewitching to the sleepless sleeper’s unversed eye.

Between both lights of Twilight
The lonely beholder partakes of primeval scenes,
Crepuscular, dusky, a myriad gloamy flights
Winebibbing him thus with vintage sweetness of oncoming Dreams …

Night

The deep Darkness of Night
And the Silence that therein dwells
Offer the sleepless sleeper a welcome plight
To enrich his earthly Hells.

The starred Silence of Night
Over which he kept starry vigil,
Drew him ever upwards towards heroic height
Into the Voice of a droning Recital.

The errant Wind of Night
That stirs neither leaf nor bough,
Sweeps by the sleepless sleeper’s sight
As he glimpses the russet rustle of the Dawn’s brow …

Dawn

Ah ! The pastel sfumato of Dawn
Rose dancing before the eyes of him
Who had kept awake till morn
To contemplate Her hempen, yellow, rising Rim.

The gay abandon of the dancing Dawn
Set astir his weary eyelids wide
To the luminous kaleidoscope of morn,
To the merriment of Her looming pride.

Joyous Disc of rosy Dawn
Surging high from Her darkened slumber.
The vigil held out his arms to Her, the Fawn,
And in one leap tore his laughing sides a asunder …

Paul Mirabile has travelled forty-nine years through Africa, Europe and Asia teaching History, languages and literature whilst studying the cultures and the languages of the countries where he taught, fashioning what has become the Mediaeval Eurasian Koinê, exposed in nine books and dozens of articles. He has published books, articles, essays, short stories, travel narratives and several poems in over twenty-five academic journals or more popular magazines and newspapers, writing in French, English or Spanish.