A Walk to the Sea
The ship sailing above the town affects me
In a strange way; balanced upon roofs It glides, too large, a curiosity On the broad flank of a blue hill of sea Opposite my hill, and me. On the edge of England all perspectives suffer This sea-change. The mapped line dissolves Under the moon ‘s wash; England’s lover Must swear allegiance to many drowned miles Or forfeit a whole isle’s Sea-fingered wealth back to the covetous sea And the undiscovered graves. But chiefly time Can twist its meaning amid the uncertainty Of a half-land where nothing is still, yet seems A thunderous reef of dreams Mounted in air - visible onthe wind To visitors trapped there and becoming time As all dawns of the earth and dark-finned Lives of things rise from cell to cell With the ancient sea-smell. People have come, and left part of themselves To the mist and breeze, retracing the buried prints Unthinking of their old sea-selves In a pilgrimage whose human purpose none Can fathom. And I am one, Standing between the country and the sea, Seeking to grasp in my need and love of the place Above all things a sense of history, And why, with the waters calling, I now stand On these last inches of land. |