The Wave Hennets: Sea and shore
WAVES DON'T MOVE
If you think the waves move, read a physics book:
it's the water that moves up and down. The waves
cheat the eye; from the pebbled shore it may look
as if towards you they come, as if they were
minutes hastening endwards, toiling like slaves,
each one heaving along a chain till they blur
into nothingness, seething out into sand
where the dryness runs back, imperturbably
sure, incessantly certain to keep the land
to its stillness — but earth, water, and wavy
flames, and winds that stir them all to life, are dead.
Rather say, by the eye they are cheated instead.
CLIMAX
That it starts so far out is a mystery.
Which were the winds or the currents you might as well
not ask, even if all of its history
hurries this moment into the tiniest
of the scribbles of spray though no one can spell
since it's itself that it's spelling at the crest
or the base or the urgent hidden rising
where at the time that it should and no other
what was waiting in calm, moves in recognizing
welcome and lifts, sweeps to the curving smother
of an ecstatic edge teetering out of time
till it shouts itself out, wordlessly sublime.
DISSATISFIED WAVES
They are dissatisfied every moment, are waves.
Now at the highest, they're longing to be down
at the bottom again — no stopping. Each one craves
other than where he is, not realizing
that the more he's exerting himself to drown
all that he thinks himself, lost in capsizing
from that desperate stretch, he's straining to reach
just where he's starting from, since his momentum s
sends him mounting again — and if it's the beach
all say they are seeking, the pandemonium
by those rocks over there should cause pacemakers
to inquire what gets broken in those breakers.
EARLY WAVES
When you blew in your cup, tiny ripples jerked
up and down, trying to get over the side
but they know that they couldn't. In the bath you worked
waves like a swing, but, though they might splash the floor,
didn't matter if you got wet. You could ride
legs in the air through the puddles and you tore
all the water in two: all the dry road had
spots in a double fan but your wheels threw
all the drops off in front of you. You saw mad
waves on the sea stampeding at you like blue
herds of buffaloes not caring where they go,
but they hardly could tickle your little toe.
DAZZLE ON THE SEA
There are waves far away, a sunlit glitter.
Thousands of sparks flash and unflash in thousands
of new places, each managing to split a
moment a new way; some certain together,
constellations by chance; some always seconds,
out of step; some dither, not knowing whether
to be here or be there, and have gone before
vision could catch them; some on pins and needles
not to lose the attention; a semaphore
so far away there's no sense to the signals.
All combine in a watered-silk lamé display,
until clouds or the sunset bring back the gray.
SURF TALK
Many tongues. 'Loud huzzas', one said,* and there's no
simultaneity in any applause.
Or they're hissing, these waves: if in crescendo
here, it's subsiding there. What controversy
over rocks! — the mock sobs, the questing for flaws,
clashes in passages wasting energy,
smashing triumphs collapsing in mutterings,
hollow withdrawals. Constant the background gossip
of the baffled, and all the first stutterings,
wonderings whether, rumours being let slip
of the wave coming in. All this talk must soothe
their desires, till they're like these pebbles, smooth.
* Thomas Hardy, ‘The Wind’s Prophecy’, verse iv.
NEGOTIATIONS ON THE SHORE
Where the spent wave runs under the incoming
wave, what a turmoil! They both are churned with sand
till they're neither the foam nor the sand, flinging
anyways, flurried with shocked indecisions,
on the boil when it's cold, wholly at a stand
going out coming in, thrilled by collisions,
in a conquest surrendering, gaining their loss,
wrestling to stop where they've stopped, treacherously
in alliance against both, wholly at cross-
purposes locked in open dependency.
Agitation like that can look like caprice:
a mistake, though, for see, they settle to peace.
PAST AND PRESENT RHYTHMS
Where the stone lays its aeons in shelving stairs
under this pool, almost as hard as the past,
crystallized from a molten action to squares
solid as laws, the water in the freedom
of the present ignores it with ripples cast
endless in genesis, a continuum
willing undulant play mockingly over
fossils of years, however secure our stance
at the edge. Every line loses its vigour
penning those lyric arabesques in a dance
on the page of the pool. Still, one end is known:
it's produced this brief statement of wave and stone
WHO IS LOOKING AT THE SURF?
Watch the comber upcurl: the front of the wave
darkens with hollowing (you can take it as 'threat',
say, an army with spears raised). The most concave
brims into white (you can take it as 'bridal',
say, her head-dress of lilies). An epaulette
(back to the army, but with honourable
mention this time) goes widening in wedding-cake
delicacy, white as a shroud (say Hardy
recalls, now that she's dead, the marriage, and ache
grows the sharper). Now the foam's flat on the sea
in a ragged patch — (what'll be the disguise?)
No, you've got the wrong question. Whose are the eyes?
WAVES ON LIMESTONE ROCKS
They are playing a slapdash spontaneous
anyhow game, these rollers coming along
at the side of the bay. Carboniferous
limestone in slanted tiers like a sliced loaf tipped
is the pattern they shatter on. To belong
wholly to what it obeys, however chipped
or dislodged or enslimed the rocks, it makes its
actions so freely correspond to their laws
that were laid down through centuries, its pats, hits,
swipings and lobs of white spray can trace their cause
both to freedom and fate. But it cannot lose,
unlike human obedience, forced to choose.
SLOW RHYTHMS
Are the tide or the day or the year too slow?
Stand on the naked shingle: you can still hear
all the runnels whispering where they must go.
Sand is still damp, though it may be dry round your feet.
The moon's pulling at what's at the end of the pier.
Sunrise so slow, you'd think there'd never be the heat
of the day, but you can just see it moving
up from horizons: it's at noon it looks still.
And the long afternoons — doesn't need proving!
Long they have always been, as the shadows will
be, quite soon. Pick the apple and taste its worth.
You can ignore the one that's rotting on earth.
MARKET WAVES
Here a wave, selling drapery, is pulling
out from the roll lace-fringed cloth, twitching it this
way and that to show off its sheen. There, shouting
hoarsely, a cook spreads out frying beans fanwise,
all to catch at your appetite. With a hiss,
wheat is out-tipped from a sack to advertise
what will grind to the whitest of flour for your
bread. A greengrocer polishes pebble-fruit,
and a jeweller loops beads along the shore,
all to make you stop and listen. To dispute
with temptation like this may look like bad form,
but, whatever their lines, to bargain's the norm.
FROZEN SURF
On Lake Michigan's frozen shore: cracked marble
slabs, fractured pillars and pediments, lintels
snapped across and collapsed to any angle
other than right, caryatids knocked askew,
headless, loadless; huge thighs and arms of idols
rolled from demolished temples, Buddhist, Hindu,
Roman, Christian, Inca; and priapic
spires, onion domes, muezzin towers, chopped off
in some riot of rage, left in lunatic
chaos to crush themselves further in each trough
frozen solid as ice. The lake was a womb,
till its waters became this ruinous tomb.
JETSAM
See the last wave has reached here, a random line,
dried in the sun: the rope frayed to tobacco,
so not holding that floater; serpentine
seaweed that's bladdered like a strip of tablets;
twig become finger-bone; on old glass, rainbow-
lacquered, but cracked; worm-bored wood, a heart; limpets
like blue nipples; expanded polystyrene
cuttlefish; mermaids' purses like synapses
and not purses; a razor-shell with the sheen,
growth-arcs and length of a grotesque nail; corpses,
litter, rags, tattered plastic, lying at peace,
as a record of where the waves came to cease.
FOAM
In each bubble the sun. The froth clings in crumbs.
Whisked by the wind, they scatter like down, and then
adhere, trembling but tough. Divided like plums,
planes intersecting to minimum tensions.
See them burst, and the holes jostle in again,
hiding the crater. Inside, three dimensions
hold a maze made of clear pomegranate seeds
where wincing polygons share out the pressures
of them all to each other. These mortal beads,
stirring with irised streaks, blend all their colours
to the pallor of snow. And here on the strand
they collapse, rocking back into the land.
SMALL WAVES IN A SEASHORE POOL
With what neatness these small waves crimp the water!
One doesn't notice the hitches: there's enough
to make pattern of difference. These shorter
waves are like wrinkles on the back of the hand,
always trim to adjustment. Can't be called rough,
this ranked precision in parallel, or, fanned,
staying true to a distant centre. Slender
shining venetian blinds, toppling like a row
of low dominoes, keeping time in tender
lapping succession, flouncing a furbelow
dainty modesty. So nothing foreboding?
At the edge of the pool the sand's eroding.
SAND-POOL
In this sand-pool the yarns of the sun are woven
under the waves, gilt threads running through silver
in a diamond pattern that's a fusion
neither alone would have made. A warp and a weft
are renewing a live transparent chequer
neither on surface nor sand, a kind of theft
from their being, that happens without knowing,
save what the eye in its random play pretends.
An ephemeral fabric brightly flowing
into and out of the mind, one of the blends
that has happened because both are here, the word
of the waves and the listener who has heard.
SAND WAVES
See the sand on the shore has done its best to
follow the waves, somewhat more slowly, moulding
for a tide what took moments. It's been caressed to
lifting this ridge to match this grove to match this
ridge and groove, ridge and groove, so corrugating
ground it resembles sky, where the artifice
of the wind has persuaded cloud to cirrus
ripples that should last while we remember to look.
In adagio tempo some mutinous
freedom has yielded to measure, and what shook
to a pulse keeps to bars. But sand isn't wave —
see, the wind is already blurring the stave.
UNSUCCESSFUL SURFERS
Like a pianist's fingers playing a long,
detailed arpeggio, Pacific combers
go collapsing from end to end. Like a gong
zithering softer, their roar wanes forever
under new detonations. Out there, surfers
paddle like penguins searching, seeming never
to arrive at the right concatenation —
self, distance, wave. Not a one has stayed upright:
their command of stampede, their exaltation
deft in its easy theft of power, a flight
ever fleeing the danger of wave to banish
them — the white blots them out; their black limbs vanish.
METAPHORICAL SHORE
On the ribbed sea-sand other bones move, printing
rhythm of footsteps. See the hiccup between
corrugations. The grooves are filled here, squinting
sunlight to fingers; the sand becomes knuckles.
At a breeze all the shallows lose their sheen:
gooseflesh is crimping them. Can hear the chuckles
of the lost little streams drawing their long hair
sown with the ride, or they are twinings of nerve
in a flicker with dazzle. What sort of fare
do all these tongues from the sea really deserve
as they lick up the beach? And those gaping jaws
that are gnashing their teeth? — Do I hear applause?
POLISHED PEBBLE
As the pebble is polished by the sea, the
rounder it gets. Looked for a pure sphere,
but there were none. Collections looked much neater
with all the differences rolled up in the same.
In the quartz saw all the 3-D folds showing sheer
signatures over the globe, turning the aim
of each edge and each surface, a compromise
smoothly displaying all variegations.
In the tumbler we'd polish it more, a prize
gem on the shelf, sharper the adaptation
of the free to the form. But there were troubles:
you could see in a crack beautiful crystals.
DUNES
These great dunes are the sculpting of months, as are
these that are models of them under our feet
just the work of a day. Curve of the guitar,
cusp of the moon, cornice of snow, the furrow
of a frown, and the rise of a thigh. A fleet,
keel to the wind, of Arabian dhows; row
upon row of ploughshares; shoulders of walrus.
Hissing with grains scouring and settling, they shape
themselves constantly new, really mountainous
waves. See your footprints, just made, cannot escape
the erasure. But, stubborn as hog-bristle,
marram takes hold, sea-holly, sea-thistle.
THE WAVES 'BREAKING'
There are 'breaking', these waves. Power once transferred
smoothly by unmoving water now forces
it to onward collapse, complacency stirred,
headlong in shock, into hissing disaster,
catastrophic dissent, dashed into courses
nothing could warn of, blanched in boiling terror
in a jolting of foam, fanning like vanquished
hosts in their pallor, ragged, thinning, slowing
towards death or surrender, at last finished.
Stumbling too far has but hastened their failing
and they shrink to be churned with sand underneath,
and some froth twirls above like a sodden wreath.