These are private words It is not for you to know But me to say You turned Under a ragged sun Only then I remembered How the world ends Not with a whimper (As Mr Eliot said) But a shrivelled leaf Almost an hour gone The chink of knives on cups Sour coffee breath In that aching clarity Between wakefulness and sleep I waited while You went on ahead I hate it here you said But we have nowhere left to go Except this curl of beach Tonguing the acid sting Of salt and vinegar on cracked lips That common benediction I will swim Til my ear aches With the conch deep voice Of your chasing echo Ribs a heaving predator Breathing in A swelling tide Breathing out A stitch in time Just like Jesus had No more walking Face a squall Towards the sunpath, wounding The shallow sea now gone Leaving brine and sulphur Wary, scuttling things The day again renews The shape of your shadow thins Over loose corrugations Slips beneath my feet When I turn head on To almost forever In blinding scintillations
