20 OCTOBER 1967, Page 15

Sunset at Edfu

ALAN ROSS

A sunset at first so pale it's hardly there—• Merely a suffusion of pink over sandstone, A faint flushing of the wake— Then the egrets, as exact in formation As Spitfires, turn their wings all colours. Felucca sails stain gold, hulls black.

Then curiously it's all in reverse—

Orange, lavender, peppermint, like wash Transfers on the sand, as if linen Was laid there to dry. And in midstream Watching through binoculars the herons totter, We catch on the breeze whiffs of molasses.

Around now the silence wraps Up the river, itself squeezing the last drops From what here is almost the only Benevolence of nature, the tried god— A sun slipping over the desert like ice Leaving a rim pink as lipstick on a glass.