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become water Like us, the tide is seeking a cove Where it doesn’t need to be obliging. Love In its secret cave may rise and fall To its own moon: the beck and call Of the sea won’t be heard. The cliff face Runs its mascara, such tears of disgrace As leave the rocks with purple stains. It is clear the sky has taken pains To shoo such clouds away as might Freckle the foreshore from a great height. The tide’s scandalous incompetence Is complete: the sea runs out of patience With every form of rock and pool – This tide of love has never bent to any school But ebbs in its own petulant way: The way art or water does, you say; The way all things that are fought for Settle in a hidden cove and accept water. 16
page 17
at ink level, the sea Here on the writing desk of the earth The sun goes down quickly at ink level. Soon the stony outcrop will be a blob Of light blue and the sky will be pale As the tissue rises. Is it time to go in Or is it time to go outside? Only time Will tell me how the levels rise – Phrases cluster on the sunlit page, So many oyster-catchers thread the surf, Their needlepoint becomes pale green. Water is near, shale bursts in applause, Gulls congregate on a drifting raft. Am I going out or coming in with the sea? Not everything is blessed by the promise Of water: your book on birds Is soaked by the wash, ink grows pale In its buckled galleys. From the Hellespont Of a paper clip, Leander swims to me. 17

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become water

Like us, the tide is seeking a cove Where it doesn’t need to be obliging. Love In its secret cave may rise and fall To its own moon: the beck and call Of the sea won’t be heard. The cliff face Runs its mascara, such tears of disgrace

As leave the rocks with purple stains. It is clear the sky has taken pains To shoo such clouds away as might Freckle the foreshore from a great height. The tide’s scandalous incompetence Is complete: the sea runs out of patience

With every form of rock and pool – This tide of love has never bent to any school But ebbs in its own petulant way: The way art or water does, you say; The way all things that are fought for Settle in a hidden cove and accept water.

16

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