As the lime trees shattered the air with golden plates
They seized the child and squeezed his heart, and the fates,
Quick laughed and clapped their hands in a rainbow spin,
Sang loud and opened his eyes and pushed him in,
Tossed the dog clear through to be born anew
In the lift, the spume, the pirate’s hour made true.
It was no hedge they steered along
On that blackbird-budded autumn song
But a dark-hearted dream over-flung with gold
Where the sea-gulls shone and the porpoises rolled.
Hedge sparrows, hare, who sees them there?
The child runs to sea with the sun in his hair.
By the shore bleached hay is the wind-blown sand;
Further out flung spray, or a briony strand,
Slaps at his cheek as he rides the prow
To view with rapture not a plough
But an eastern trader slicing bright
through the blue-black ocean-earth; delight
Floods over his leaping soul; a prize!
But he lets it fade as he sudden spies
Abaft, abeam, abreast, agog
His second mate, Black-leg, all dog,
Hull down a-hunting albatross,
Not pheasant.
Flown. A double loss
As the albatross whirrs harsh away
Down the longing air to another bay,
Hailing gay galleons surging through billows
Their cloud-sails as plump as Mother Goose pillows.
A wreck, there’s a wreck in the over-hung beck,
Where the duck-weed’s barnacled over the deck
Of a hulk, wet bulk, rotting slow as a fear
In the tide-race, the quicksands, the reef by the weir.
Above in its black-spined bars, twined rigging,
Bright rose hips shout, burnt haws are singing;
A nine knot gust flings a handful of birds
Down a crashing wave of frothing curds.
Under the waters lie gold moidores,
Jewel-shot goblets from chrysophase wars.
Black-leg is aboard her, he snowks and he flails
Under guinea-gold leaf-falls, world-weary pails;
With effort he beaches a water-logged chest
And the sea-dog is clasped to the pirate-child’s vest;
For it isn’t the branch of a worm-eaten elm,
It’s the triumph of vision with faith at the helm.
(Undated, 1972?)
