Mostly from World War 2, the land’s defences
are concrete reinforced with rusting iron.
The boat slides down the slip-way with loud shrieks
as the metal-bound keel strikes stray pebbles.
The boat is sea-worthy, the prow lifts, timbers
grind out the subdued groans of seasoned wood,
the land is porous and erosible,
but the sea makes us free of its wet furlongs,
and we head for the exquisite pencil-line
out there without choosing a destination:
this must be a round-trip
to test the engine.
Desire is opposed to desire: land to sea.
Have you noticed, the sea has no defence?
Clearly, the land does not attack the sea –
the fear’s the other way, points the other way,
the dread of the sea swells the imagination.
But I’m glad to live in a sea-regarding place.
Our town looks out, looks out all the time
at that impoverished eternity
that shilly-shallying monopoly –
and we’ll use it, we’ll find a use for it!
Old people, when they have no foothold here,
may take the ocean option, the wild card.
Let sailors sail where ever they like,
let them do what they like, because they love
Mister Lackland Ocean and they embrace
the waves’ antique monastic poverty –
a ceiling of cheap clouds, a dance-floor
for drowning in?
Anyone with a boat,
feel free to join our open sea! No towers
interrupt our sky, the edge is with us,
as clean a line as you and I ever saw…
And we will return later. This is just
a round trip to test the good boat’s engine.
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