I think it’s smashing

Undermining

This island,

Unpinning

Gorse and headland,

Arresting, without warrant,

Growth and sunlight.

Landscapes at risk,

Thumped with fists of wind,

Eaten up with a mouthful of mist,

Slump like a Stock Market

Suddenly into the Channel.

Down the long final slide

Go houses full of the dying,

Carefully tended gardens

Into the riot of salt . . .

While

All along

A population of cold

Shelled and speechless creatures

Waits, to inherit

The hot, hideous, restless

Chaos I’ve helped to make

In sixty industrious years.

Sixy industrious years

And the motorway from the Midlands

Have brought me down at last

To the level of the sea.

I see with the sea’s eye.

It bites the cliffs,

Fondles the coast, and swings

Away again, out to sea,

Waving, waving,

Making no promises,

It spits back in our faces

The coins and cans of the beaches.

It’s the sea I want,

Belting the land, breaking

All the rules, speaking

Its guttural, thrusting tongue.

It pays no taxes,

Cringes before no conscience

And carries its own prestige

On its naked, shining back.

It’s the sea I want,

If it’s not too late

To sit, and contemplate

The hard bright barbarous jewels

Of the totally indifferent sea:

Something I never made

And cannot be guilty of.

I have done with the pains of love.

Leave me alone with the sea,

That picks bones clean,

And was, and shall be.

Elma Mitchell

Dare

Yesterday, I breasted

the Atlantic while the day

stood by with held

breath shivering on

the cusp of autumn

the cliffs stretched

west as far as they dared.

I swam across the white

loosening noose of waves

a little further.

Kate Clanchy

Sea Love

Tide be runnin’ the great world over:

’Twas only last June month I mind that we

Was thinkin’ the toss and the call in the breast of the lover

So everlastin’ as the sea.

Heer’s the same little fishes that sputter and swim,

Wi’ the moon’s old glim on the grey, wet sand;

An’ him no more to me nor me to him

Than the wind goin’ over my hand.

Charlotte Mew

Staying in the Mountains in Summer

I’ve moved here to the Immortals’ place:

Flowers everywhere we didn’t plant before.

The courtyard trees are bent like clothes-horses.

At the feast, winecups float in a new spring.

Dark balcony. Path through deep bamboo.

Long summer dress. Confusion of books.

I sing in the moonlight and ride a painted boat,

Trusting the wind to blow me home again.

Yü Hsüan-chi

Translated by Geoffrey Waters

from Elegy on Captain Cook

Say first, what Power inspir’d his dauntless breast

With scorn of danger, and inglorious rest,

To quit imperial London’s gorgeous domes,

Where, deck’d in thousand tints, bright Pleasure roams;

In cups of summer-ice her nectar pours,

Or twines, ’mid wint’ry snows, her roseate bowers . . .

Where Beauty moves with fascinating grace,

Calls the sweet blush to wanton o’er her face,

On each fond youth her soft artillery tries,