By Donald Davie
A queer thing about those waters: there are no
Birds there, or hardly any.
I did not miss them, I do not remember
Missing them, or thinking it uncanny.
The beach so-called was a blinding splinter of limestone,
A quarry outraged by hulls.
We took pleasure in that: the emptiness, the hardness
Of the light, the silence, and the water’s stillness.
But this was the setting for one of our murderous scenes.
This hurt, and goes on hurting:
The venomous soft jelly, the undersides.
We could stand the world if it were hard all over.
Donald Davie, "Across the Bay" from Selected Poems. Copyright © 1985 by Donald Davie. Reprinted by permission of Carcanet Press, Ltd.
Source: Selected Poems (Carcanet Press Ltd, 1985)
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