Shadowed by the nodding houses,
Stabbed and barred by wind-tossed sunlight
Walks the alley to the sea.
Angled masts there groan aloud -
Mocked beneath the autumn sky -
And beg the thrust of sea-soaked canvas
Now denied;
Their burgees flutter sullenly
High above the lolling hulls
Left haphazard,
Tossed away like wind-curled willow leaves.
Low tide.
Mesmeric shadows weave a course
Wild and silent on the mud:
The sea-birds scream
And wing away their lives in rhythmic motion.
Look down.
The web-foot trail
Leads surely out across the trembling ooze
To reach the water;
The narrow water wanders out,
Tenuous and lipped with light,
Zig-zag, zig-zag, scarcely stirring,
Flattened onwards to the sea.
Out, far out, the flood wall goes
Lapped by marshes,
Green and gliding;
Cows, like ships, slow moving convoys,
Lifting heads to smell the breezes,
Tang of samphire, mud and brambles;
And the path goes onward still
High above the silver slashes,
Marshy ripples, tufted sedges,
Weeds and gull-pools
Sky-reflecting,
Blue and hazy,
Lazy sleeping in the blowing;
Clouds quick-scudding,
Sailing, streaking, overhead;
Water laughing, witch green, sparkling;
Yellow smear of distant sand-spit,
Smudging lonely in the distance;
North sea silent,
Drowned in quiet, pulsing sounds of life and solitude.
(1961)
