CU RE
To rack and leprous ruin, so close its lone gull rolls an eagle, cannot
Rouse the ring to reach its buoy's duty out: Reef! I bellow reef!
In, to the heart in, the sun did into you so sear its S you crawled
From under any lifeguard's vigil. Now the day is near to noon; but
When a man's foot cannot land and leave his eye a Hindu's climbing
Air on holy incline to the sun, how then are arms, unthickened
By the distance of their shallow style, scalpels 'twixt your island
Body and the shore's hoarded more; how then the fins that feed on
Man!
And whittling cords that somewhere out of sight had leashed the
clouds
Loose them moving on the sun; mar the bright day dark; the sea's
face
Shadow like one birthmarked badly black. That lone gull frightened
Flees, to leave in ocean blemished to an undertow of cold madness
You alone. Oh the bell! it cannot toll even an inauspicious passing.
Your only chance: that sound the sun initialed in your soul make deed.
Catch a wave accumulating greatness where you are, far out, for fall
At end of long build landward. But Time runs out like an open wound.
Catch one great wave right and Miracle! you're bird till beach
Where by the glide ground down out of sky scratched you lie and glad
For being-oh you who hymn, when by the wave as His was it is
winged,
Lift up the body!-nowhere slashed by the coast's tricked guardians.
You are home now, home; and your fondest sense freshening to truth
You see the angler's line that seemed when you sped down to the sea,
The low sun at an angle fevering the eye to dream a scene of sport;
Seemed lashing to hook from heaven one of the gull herd that circles
Always over possibilities of fish; you see that line in water end.
Still you can dream, knowing water deep more lovingly from land, this
Sand that slips through the tightening hand a crumbled fish of shale.
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