At the shore

... ― the two rainbows, the young
woman, unseeing herself, but taken
out of the body, as we are blindly,
by self-forgetting ...

Geoffrey Hill, “The Orchards of Syon” XLIX


Meeting place: you know the rest,
Canute, time and tide not waiting,
and the flotsam: boots and toys, salting
barrrels; we fine the sands for purity,

borrow tongues to speak
or polish driftwood beasts
all day to sell for pittance:
call it treasure of the deep

just rubbish off the heap
we’ve constructed of our lives ―
of this paradise ―
where use and worth are disconnected.

How can you unsee yourself,
through the wrack reflected
or in cantos rich and cryptic?
Megablitz the covers back,

reveal the lovers side by side,
her black hair his shaved head.
Between their hands
a millimetre is all they have.

This scares me witless:
the hollow eyes stare empty at spent sex.
Take the common, drink the lees,
function as a human by the sea.


George Roberts
28/12/2002