Most Popular White Papers
Content provided in partnership with
A gull - Poem
Literary Review, Wntr, 2002 by Edwin Morgan
A Gull A seagull stood on my window-ledge today, said nothing, but had a good look inside. That was a cold inspection I can tell you! North winds, icebergs, flash of salt crashed through the glass without a sound. He shifted from leg to leg, swivelled his head. There was not a fish in the house--only me. Did he smell my flesh, that white one? Did he think I would soon open the window and scatter bread? Calculation in those eyes is quick. `I tell you, my chick, there is food everywhere.' He eyed my furniture, my plants, an apple. Perhaps he was a mutation, a supergull. Perhaps he was, instead, a visitation which only used that tight firm forward body to bring the waste and dread of open waters, foundered voyages, matchless predators, into a dry room. I knew nothing. I moved; I moved an arm. When the thing saw the shadow of that, it suddenly flapped, scuttered claws along the sill, and was off, silent still. Who would be next for those eyes, I wondered, and were they ready, and in order?
Edwin Morgan is retired as Professor of English at the University of Glasgow and continues to live in Glasgow. His poems, translations, and essays have been widely published and anthologized. His numerous books of poetry include Virtual and Other Realities, Sonnets from Scotland, Poems of Thirty Years (which won the Scottish Arts Council Book Award), From Glasgow to Saturn, The New Divan, Concrete Poems, and a collection of translations, Rites of Passage.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Fairleigh Dickinson University
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group
