(For C.M. and J.G.)
THE far-flung spray
Scatters across the weed-entangled shore;
And ’neath the grey
Wastes of the heaving sea
The myriad pebbles endlessly
Tumble and fret and roar...
A memory stirs of a yacht lifting
Before the wind in other, happier days--
Long hours upon the prow, watching the shifting
Patterns of clouds across the burning haze
Of summer afternoons:
Cool nights of beauty, filled
With sweeping shadows where the nascent moon's
Enchanted beams caressed the tired sea
Arid, stilling all things, stilled
The love and longing in the heart of me.
Oh, that I might be free
To wander ever where the white foam breaks
And eager wavelets thrust
Tentative fingers over trodden sand--
Or rest eternally
Where plangent gulls and drifting kittiwakes
Cry on the desolate fringes of the land
A song to live when all my songs are dust.
